


The World's Greatest First Love - The John Egbert Affair

by Chichirinoda



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:35:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chichirinoda/pseuds/Chichirinoda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than a decade after winning the game and creating a new version of Earth for both the humans and the trolls to live in peace, John Egbert takes a new job at a large entertainment conglomerate in Hollywood. It's been nearly ten years since he last saw his former friend, Karkat Vantas. Ten years since Karkat broke his heart and then disappeared out of his life. Now Karkat is his boss, and determined to make John fall in love with him. But John is determined not to give Karkat the opportunity to break his heart a second time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fusion between Homestuck and the boy's love manga, Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi. If you don't know the latter, don't worry. It follows the general framework of the story, and the side characters are the same, but you only need to know Homestuck to follow this story.

> **Past John: Fall in love**

"Oh!" John drew his hand back from the library book he'd been reaching for, his cheeks burning fiercely. His fingers seemed to tingle from where the other boy's claws had scraped them accidentally when their hands met, leaving light red lines that faded quickly.

 _Why do I feel this way?_

"Sorry! I was just--"

His heart was pounding. When had the feelings of a regular, close broship turned into something like this? He didn't even know.

 _I try to be so careful to act normal around him. I can't ever tell him how I feel. Not after I rejected him, before._

"For fuck's sake, Egbert! Get out of my way! That stupid schoolfeeder wants me to write an essay by tomorrow and I need that book or I'll never get out of high school and become a productive member of this backwards, primitive society!"

"Sorry, Karkat!"

 _I love him. I love him so much. Oh god. Kill me now._

======>

> **Current John: Get a new job making shitty movies**

John tapped his foot nervously as the pretty, thirty-something woman behind the desk rummaged through his file, confirming that he'd signed all the forms and everything was in order. He figured, anyway. He wasn't really clear on what Human Resources did. It sort of sounded like a bunch of people who dug humans up out of the ground.

He grinned at that mental image, and then quickly wiped the expression off his face as she looked up again with a smile of her own. Dave would probably appreciate that. He'd have to tell him later... or well, whenever he saw him, next.

"Well, Mr. Egbert, it looks as though everything's in order," she said brightly.

 _Aha, I was right,_ he thought.

She stood and gestured to him. "Now I'll just show you where your desk is. You've been assigned to the Romantic Comedy division, on the eighth floor. Right this way, please."

John jumped up, his mouth falling open. "Huh?" he exclaimed. "But I thought they would put me in animation. I've only got experience editing comic scripts. I don't know anything about scripts for romantic comedies! Are you sure that's right?"

The woman arched an eyebrow. Apparently the Managers of Human Resources at huge entertainment conglomerates weren't used to people objecting to much when they offered them a job. But John was already nervous enough about editing movie scripts when all he'd ever done before was freelance editing of Dave's comic books.

Sure, the principles were the same, or he'd never have been hired. But romantic comedies? Really? They could at least have stuck him in the action adventure department so he could help make _awesome_ movies.

He was surprised they even _had_ a whole department just for romantic comedies. It had to be a pretty small department!

She was rummaging through the paperwork on her desk, and pulled out a single sheet. "Oh yes, Mr. Egbert. It's all right here. We have an opening in that department, and you were chosen to fill it. That department is expanding right now."

She looked up expectantly, and John struggled to maintain an even expression. "Uh, well yeah, I'm happy to take the job," he said, floundering a little. "I mean, it's not that. I'm just, uh, surprised. I mean, it's got to be pretty weird to see a man working in a department like that. What are my career prospects in there, really?"

She blew out an impatient breath and set down the page, putting her hands on her slim hips. "Actually, the entire department is all men. And as I said, it's expanding! You certainly have nothing to worry about. Please, come along." Her expression softened and she gave him a wink. "They're all handsome men, too! Actually, it's quite a popular place, except at crunch time. _You'll_ fit right in!"

Blushing, John followed the woman towards the elevator.

======>

> **Current John: Meet the boss**

"Oh no!" John's guide stopped dead in her tracks halfway down the row of cubicles, and suddenly about-faced to look back the way they had come.

The large cubicle on the end seemed to have been decorated with pink paper hearts, balloons, and movie posters featuring men and women kissing, cuddling, or pushing one another away with comical expressions on their faces.

"Isn't that it, there?" John asked, confused.

The HR woman was looking slightly pale. Maybe a bit green. "Oh, yes. It's right over there. You go along, then. I just realized that we're in the middle of shooting a film, so it's not a great-- Well, you go ahead. It was lovely to meet you, Mr. Egbert."

She nodded to him, flashed him what looked like a sympathetic smile, and then trotted back down the hall as fast as her sensible heels could carry her.

John frowned after her. What the hell was that all about? Shaking his head, he started towards the little explosion of pink and glitter up ahead.

As he walked, he became aware of a strange smell. Like unwashed socks and stale coffee. He wrinkled his nose as it grew more acute with every step.

Finally, he rounded the corner and found a scene from some kind of disaster movie that no one sane would ever actually make.

Several men lay sprawled in chairs, an almost visible haze of B.O. rising from them. Their hair was lanky and unwashed and their shirts and pants were wrinkled as if they'd been sleeping in them for the past week. The table between them was piled so high with multicoloured scripts, it was impossible to see over them to the far end of the cubicle.

One of the men raised his head wearily and looked at John. "Script...?" he croaked, like a zombie inquiring about brains.

John shook his head mutely, his eyes wide behind his square-framed glasses.

The man dropped his head down with a thud and groaned.

"What time is it?" another man asked without raising his head.

"IT'S TEN FUCKING O'CLOCK, AND IT'S TIME FOR SOMEONE OTHER THAN MYSELF TO GET THEIR THINKPAN IN GEAR AND GET OFF THEIR NUB AND GET SOMETHING DONE AROUND HERE!"

At that high-volume shout from the far end of the cubicle, all three of John's new coworkers lifted their heads a few inches. Though John thought a shout like that would probably have gotten him out of his chair as quickly as a jolt from a mega-shock joy buzzer, the men just sighed again and dropped their heads down.

"We can't do anything until the new proofs come in," the first one moaned.

"Let us sleep. Please," said the second guy.

"Uh, boss. I think the new guy's here," said the third, raising a hand to jab a thumb generally in John's direction, though his aim was a bit off, due to the fact that his eyes were closed.

John finally found enough saliva to clear his throat. This was nothing like what he'd pictured when he came in to work this afternoon for his first day. "Hi!" he said, a little too cheerfully. "I'm John Egb--"

The troll who rose up from the chair on the other end of the table was tall and sort of compact, with two rows of sharp teeth bared in a snarl. The horns were still nubby, though they were two inches longer than John remembered, and his hair seemed a little longer, curling around the nape of his neck in a rough tumble at the back, though it was still pretty short in the front.

His eyes were a bright, cherry crimson set deep in fields of yellow. And they were narrowed with perpetual rage.

John had thought Karkat's voice was pretty familiar, but he hadn't been able to believe he would run into his best friend. A best friend he hadn't seen or heard from in ten years. A best friend he had once been so in love with, he could barely breathe.

Now he couldn't breathe for an entirely different reason.

"I know who the fuck you are, slimebrain," Karkat snarled, rounding the table. Unlike the other three people in his department, Karkat didn't look like he hadn't slept in a week. He had bags under his eyes and his clothing was a bit rumpled, but he still clearly had a lot of energy. A small, tasteful Cancer symbol was stitched in red on the right lapel of his black golf shirt.

He grabbed John's arm in a tight grip, and dragged him down the hall. "Come on!"

"Uh...where are we going?" John asked, looking back towards the other three strangers as if they might offer him some rescue from the clearly pissed-off troll, but none of them so much as raised their heads to see him go. He could swear one of them was snoring softly.

"We're going to do some work, fuckass," Karkat growled, his clawed fingers tightening around John's wrist. "That's what we do at work, you know. We _work_."

"Right..." John said, eyes a little wide. "I sort of thought for a second you were going to punch me out."

"Why would I punch you out?" Karkat sneered, not looking at John. "You're only the wriggler who dumped me ten fucking years ago. Why would I be mad at a stupid, pathetic, grub like you?"

"It's funny you should say that, because you seem just a little bit mad," John said. Karkat mashed the elevator button with his thumb, grinding the digit into the button with excessive force. "And I haven't talked to you in, well, a really, really long time!"

"Yeah," Karkat growled, glaring at the elevator doors as if he might set them on fire with the force of his gaze.

"So, if we're not going off somewhere so you can kill me in private, where _are_ we going?" John asked hesitantly.

The elevator doors chimed pleasantly as they opened, and Karkat yanked John inside.

"I already told you, Egbert," Karkat snarled. "We're going to work."

======>

> **Current John: Get sexually harassed**

They got off the elevator on the fourth floor and strode up a hall lined on both sides with empty, darkened boardrooms. As they reached a closed door, with light shining through the frosted glass, Karkat finally let go of John's arm and knocked perfunctorily before opening the door.

John surreptitiously rubbed his forearm before moving to follow.

"Do you have them done?" Karkat asked the woman who sat at the table in the middle of the room, a computer and printer set up in front of her, which was spewing pages. She was rather frantically poring over the pages as they came out of the printer.

John's jaw dropped at Karkat's tone. He didn't sound more than mildly irritated, certainly far from angry. He almost sounded... _professional_.

"Almost, Mr. Vantas!" the woman squeaked, looking up at him for an instant before going back to her work. "I'm just printing them off, now."

Karkat pointed at John, pointed at a chair, and then plucked the pages out of the woman's grasp and sat down next to the chair he'd designated for John, beginning to read.

John sat down obediently, wondering what the hell he was doing here.

After a few minutes, Karkat leaned over the table, spreading pages out in front of him like a fan. "Okay, I like what you've done here, but this kiss." He stabbed a claw down on a particular page. "It doesn't read like a kismesitude at all, from the troll's perspective. I know you're human, and most of the people working on this film are humans, but this relationship is between a troll and a human, and the troll is filled with hate. You can't treat it like conventional, human hate."

The woman nodded, listening raptly. John couldn't believe that Karkat had yet to use the word 'fuck' or the phrase 'idiotic nooksucking pink wrigglers'.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Vantas," the woman sighed. "I know it's natural to you, because you're a troll. But it's hard for us humans to really understand your romance."

"Trust me, I've known that since I was six sweeps old," Karkat said, and thumped John hard on the shoulder. "Get up."

"Huh?" John jumped to his feet. Were they leaving already?

"Look," Karkat said, not even looking at John, but addressing the woman directly. "The thing you've got to understand about troll romance is that it's all about pity and hate. A redrom romance is about pity. When you know your lover pities you, you can open up to them, truly make yourself vulnerable, because you know that you're so fucking pitiable in their eyes that they wouldn't even want to hurt you further. Make sense?"

The woman nodded, eyes wide and rapt.

"Right, of course you understand. Humans love out of mutual respect and a desire to make the other one happy, but it's along the same spectrum as pity, even if it's completely opposite, so you don't have too much trouble understanding it," Karkat said.

Then he looked directly at John.

"Now hate, that's something humans have a harder time with. You can't imagine being vulnerable with someone you hate. Why would you do that? Someone you hate will take advantage of that, and hurt you. And it's the same with trolls."

Karkat was still staring at John, and it was starting to freak him out. "But the thing about trolls is, it's hard to find someone you can have that perfect rivalry with. That person that makes your blood boil and fizz until you want to rip all of your skin off. It drives you mad, because you can't stand that they make you feel that way, and yet you don't want it to stop, because it's so thrilling. You want to be with them, all the time, and fight and banter and conquer the world together, because there's no one else good enough to be at your side when you're at your height. Just so long as they know that you're just that little bit better than they are."

As he spoke, John felt those crimson eyes boring into him. Karkat took a step forward, and John squeaked, taking a step back. Then another step, as Karkat continued to advance. John's eyes grew round as saucers as Karkat continued his monologue, and suddenly his back hit the wall and he was forced to stop.

But Karkat didn't stop.

Suddenly, John found himself getting angry. What was he doing, being scared of his best friendleader whom he had fought beside and saved the entire universe with, and trusted implicitly? John might not have his powers anymore, but he was still John Egbert! And this was still Karkat Vantas.

John's eyes narrowed and he took a step back towards Karkat, pushing off the wall with one hand to move him a little faster back towards the other troll.

Karkat's eyes flashed with something. Surprise.

Pleasure.

Then Karkat grabbed John around the waist and slammed him hard against the wall. Before John knew what was happening, a snarling mouth filled with razor blades had crushed itself against his lips, and he could taste blood. He yelped and grabbed Karkat's arms, half drowning in the energy of the kiss and half trying to push him off.

Just as suddenly, Karkat lifted his head away from John and turned to look at the woman, who was staring at them both, her mouth hanging open in shock. The troll's hands tightened around John, drawing him closer, and John was too confused not to comply.

"You get that?" Karkat asked. "Think you can write that?"

Blushing, the woman nodded quickly and turned back to her computer. "Oh yes, I think I can do something with that. Thank you, Mr. Vantas!"

"Good."

Karkat let go of John so quickly that he nearly fell. He stumbled back and hit the wall again, his knees a little weak and his lips stinging.

"Come on, Egbert," Karkat said, already striding towards the door. "Our work here is done. Let's let the woman work, so we can get those proofs out to the actors before the whole fucking shooting schedule is shot to hell."


	2. Chapter 2

> **Past John, but not by much: Lose your sweet deal**

John looked up and stretched as Dave walked into the office, mail in hand. The comic book artist still wore his Ben Stiller shades, of course, but his hair was long and tied into a ponytail, and his wardrobe had gotten more outlandish - ironically - over the years.

Their 'office' was really just the extra bedroom in John's apartment, with two desks pushed together against one wall and a drafting table against another. Boxes of art supplies were strewn haphazardly around on the floor, with a few carefully-maintained footpaths leading from desk to door to table.

"How's the latest shitty comic working out for you?" Dave asked, throwing himself into a chair and putting his feet up on the table.

"It's shitty," John said, tossing the draft pages on the table, covered in blue ink in his own chicken scratches. "I think you can start drawing in the panels today. I've got the script you wrote edited and mostly placed."

"Cool."

Dave's art had gotten a lot better, and between John's slightly superior grasp of English grammar and significantly superior grasp of merchandizing, and Dave's writing and drawing skills, the two of them had been living off the proceeds of Dave's webcomics for years now.

Dark Horse was sniffing around for the rights to do print versions, and so were a few other places. In fact, John was sure Dave was close to signing a deal. That would be even better for their team, giving them more resources to work and allowing them to work faster, with some of the marketing obligations off of John's plate.

Dave opened the envelopes and read them, then sat up suddenly, the envelopes slipping onto the floor.

"Holy shit."

John sat up, eyes wide. "What?"

Rather than make any more uncool exclamations, Dave tossed the thick sheaf of pages he'd been reading in front of John, who picked them up and started scanning the typed letter. It didn't take long to get to the good part.

"Holy shit!"

"I know."

"But that's like a hundred grand advance if you sign with them!"

"It's exactly a hundred grand. A one, followed by five zeros, is a hundred grand."

"And a three book contract? That's amazing."

"Sure is amazing."

"Holy shit!"

"Yeah."

"But hey, what's this part?"

John kept reading, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. "It says here that they only use in-house editors."

The two young men's eyes met. Dave bit his lip, and John sighed.

"It's such a good deal for you, Dave."

"I know..."

"You should take it." John set the pages down and pushed them back at Dave, smiling. "Really. It's incredible! You totally have it made. Maybe I can get a job as an in-house editor there, and go back to editing your stuff."

There was a long silence as Dave searched John's expression. "I don't have to take the deal."

John shook his head. "Take the damn deal, Dave. I'm serious." He was. If Dave didn't take this opportunity - and this was the kind of opportunity that would never come again - it would be all John's fault if Dave spent the rest of his days writing shitty webcomics, selling Cafe Press t-shirts and pimping his paypal button so he could make the rent.

Dave sighed and rubbed his nose with his fingers, pushing the sunglasses up a little with the motion. "Okay, I'll take it."

"Great!" John jumped up and grabbed Dave's hand. "This calls for drinks. First round's on me."

"John," Dave said, stumbling a little as John yanked him to his feet. "It's eleven in the morning. Not that it's not always possibly time for drinks in the Strider household, but this is a little early, even for me."

"Yeah, but this is a really, really big deal! You need to celebrate!" _And I need a drink. Badly._

======>

> **Current John: Get some goddamn work done**

John juggled the huge pile of scripts in one hand while he covered a yawn with the other. The hallway seemed incredibly long, and he wasn't really moving that fast, which made it seem to take forever to get from the elevator to the festively-decorated cubical.

The truth was, he was dragging his feet as he walked, and not just because of the fact that he'd barely slept the night before. He also didn't really want to be here. Karkat hated him, and the whole team seemed composed of weird, stressed-out, downer people.

This really sucked!

 _Maybe I should just quit,_ he thought miserably. _Dad could get me a job at Betty Crocker._ The thought made him want to cry and throw up at the same time, but he wasn't actually sure that it wasn't a tiny bit tempting.

Okay, maybe not Betty Crocker.

But he could get _some_ other job. Maybe he could do freelance work and pay the rent at his apartment with that long enough to find steady work. Sure, he'd just moved to a new place to be close to his new job, incurred all those expenses, not to mention uprooted himself for this, but he _could_ quit. That was an option.

He rounded the corner, steeling himself, and three bright smiles turned to greet him.

"Hey, it's the new guy!" one of John's coworkers said, and got up to thump him on the back. "Sorry about yesterday! We were pretty out of it."

Karkat sat at the far end of the room once again, a multi-coloured script up in front of his face and his feet on the desk. He looked up over it, scowled at John, and then went back to reading.

John was a little startled by all the happiness when he'd expected a palpable cloud of gloom hovering over the table. Okay, a lot startled. "Uh, wow. You guys are sure different from yesterday!"

"Yesterday we'd been up for two days dealing with a crazy director demanding last-minute changes," one of the men said. "But the last of the changes went in yesterday afternoon, and he seems happy. We should be good for a while, now."

"Wow, that's a relief," John said, smiling uncertainly as he moved to his desk and set the massive pile of scripts down.

"You don't look so good, though." Karkat was glaring at him over his script again. "What's with you, Egbert?"

John gave Karkat a wide-eyed look. "What? Oh, no, I'm just a little tired."

"Why are _you_ tired?" Karkat demanded. "I sent you home early yesterday because you're untrained and you were just getting in the way!"

"Yeah, well... I stayed up all night, uh, reading these scripts." He patted the pile. "It's been a while since I watched any romcoms, and I wanted to get the sense of structure and narrative style, and all that. So I read everything your company produced last year."

"WHAT?" Karkat stared at him. Everyone else stared at him, too. "Are you fucking serious? You didn't need to do that!"

"I didn't?" John blinked. "Why did you give these to me and tell me to read them, then?"

"I did that?" Karkat sat back, then scrubbed his forehead. "You fucking idiotic nookbiting wriggler. I meant _eventually_ you should read them. You know, when you have time in between doing real work."

"Oh." John found himself flushing.

Karkat rolled his eyes and set his script down, looking at one of the other men. "Have you heard from Thompson yet? What's the status?"

There was a headshake from the one Karkat addressed, and a sigh. "Nothing, yet."

Karkat glanced at his watch, then stood up. "Fuck. Come on, Egbert."

John jumped to his feet. "Uh, you're not going to hate-kiss me again, are you?"

"Hate-kiss him?" One of John's coworkers whispered to another, their eyes wide.

Karkat made a rather animalistic snarling noise deep in his throat and grabbed John by the back of his jacket, dragging him off down the hall. "Don't be an ass. If that's even possible for you. The last thing I want to do right now is hate-kiss your pasty-faced sleep-deprived face."

John made a slight strangled noise, and Karkat let go of him, continuing to stride off down the hall as fast as his legs could carry him. Before John could think of a response to that, Karkat had his cellphone out and was punching buttons.

"This is Karkat Vantas at Emerald Studios," he growled. "You know what I want. Yeah. No, don't give me bullshit."

John waited in silence while Karkat snarled at whoever was on the other end of his phone and tried not to feel disappointed. The worst part about all this was that Karkat really did seem to hate him, and as they had established long before John had even started to feel any kind of romantic feelings for the troll, John just couldn't do kismesitude.

Not that he thought Karkat hated him in a romantic way. No, Karkat just seemed to plain old loathe him.

And not that he was inclined to try romance with Karkat again. No way. Not after the way Karkat treated him, before.

The elevator doors opened on the third floor and Karkat led the way down the hall, still shouting into his phone. "Okay! Thank you!" He slipped the blackberry back into the holster on his hip with a growl, then glanced sidelong at John. "This way."

John followed him down a side corridor to an office, which Karkat rapped on with his knuckles before opening it and barrelling inside.

"Where are we at?" he demanded. The man sitting at the computer was sitting motionless, staring at the screen with a look of panic on his face. John could practically see the bullets of sweat forming on his forehead.

"I'm working!"

"Uh huh." Karkat stomped over to the man, while John hovered in the doorway, prepared to bolt if Karkat went for him again. "How many pages have you got left to write?"

"Uh... ten?"

"TEN?! IT'S A FUCKING FORTY-PAGE PILOT SCRIPT YOU FUCKNUT. HAVE YOU BEEN TOO BUSY POLISHING YOUR BULGE UNTIL IT BLEEDS TO GET IT DONE? WHY AREN'T YOU TYPING, ARE YOU OCCUPIED WITH SOMETHING IMPORTANT LIKE PLAYING TOO MUCH FUCKING MINESWEEPER?"

The man winced away from Karkat, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. "I'm working, I swear! I've just run into some problems with the plot."

Karkat groaned. "Print out what you've got and give them to Egbert to look over, so at least we'll make some progress. Let me see if I can help you work out the problem. You do realize you have a 2:00 meeting with the bigwigs to hear your pitch, right? And you don't have a fucking _ending_."

John sat down at the small table in the far corner of the room as the printer began spitting out white pages of script. As the writer and Karkat put their heads together and began talking rapidly and quietly, John looked down at the messy stack of pages and blinked at the name written across the middle of the page, just under the title of the episode.

"Oh my gog, Gordon Thompson?"

The man looked up curiously. "Yes?"

John stared at him, then down at his script. "You're Gordon Thompson! You wrote Violence in Vegas! I love that movie."

Thompson smiled a little. "Really? That movie was panned... You liked it?"

"Oh _man_ , I know! But that part where the car drove off the parking garage and fell into the electrical cables, and then Nicholas Cage said--"

" _EGBERT_ , if you could kindly get up off your knees and finish swallowing, there's work to get done?"

John jumped at Karkat's snarl and reddened. "Oh, uh. Sorry. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that you're a great script writer, and I'm sure this pilot is going to be awesome."

The writer's smile widened and he nodded again. "Thanks...thanks a lot, man. I appreciate that."

John grinned and pulled out his pen, beginning to read.

Over the next two hours, John scribbled red all over the script with a worried frown, while Thompson typed and Karkat offered suggestions. Finally Karkat joined John at the table and began going over the pages John had already edited, adding more red to what John had already done. He commented to John on a few of the things he changed in an undertone, offering explanations about why he made certain changes and John found himself looking at the script - and at editing - in a whole new light.

Holy shit, Karkat knew what he was doing.

Suddenly Thompson drew in a deep breath and let it out. "Yes! Yes, I think I've got it. It's flowing now." He glanced up at the clock and wilted. "But how the hell am I going to write this, and do all those changes before two?"

"Good thing I already called the execs," Karkat said, his pen not ceasing its scratchings. "Your meeting is pushed back to tomorrow." He glanced up and pointed the pen at Thompson. "But you are not fucking leaving this room until that script is done, you hear me?"

Thompson gaped for a moment, then turned back to the computer, his fingers practically flying over the keys. "You are a life saver, Vantas! Thank you!"

John was equally stunned. So that had been the meaning of the call Karkat made earlier. He had come down here to get the writer unstuck and make sure he got his work done, but at the same time, he had known the writer well enough to know he wouldn't make deadline, and had made the arrangements so he wouldn't look too bad.

"Don't make a habit of this shit, Thompson," Karkat growled. "Missing a deadline once in a while is okay. But you've only got one reputation. Egbert, what the fuck is this word supposed to be?"

"Uh." John leaned over to look at the page. "Salmon."

"It looks like moose."

"It does not!"

"Your handwriting is shit."

"Well you don't have to handwrite in all caps, you know! Who does that? It's weird."

Karkat flashed a toothy grin at him, and John found himself smiling back, then they both bent their heads over the script again.

======>

> **Current John: Get your reward for a job well done**

John settled onto one of the plush couches in the lobby and leaned back, groaning as his back crackled. He wasn't sure how many hours he and Karkat and Gordon wrote and edited and rewrote and argued before the final draft was stapled and bound and ready to be presented the following morning, but now it was dark outside and his eyes felt like sandpaper.

He definitely was going to get more than two hours of sleep tonight, he promised himself.

As soon as he could stand, and force his stiff body to make the walk to the train station, and then up to his apartment. As soon as he could do all that, he would totally crash.

Karkat sat down beside him with a groan and John opened his eyes, only to find a can of soda shoved under his nose.

"Thanks," he said, taking it and pulling the tab. Compared to coffee, coke didn't have a lot of caffeine, but it should be enough to get him home, without leaving him wired and glued to the ceiling until midnight.

"No problem," Karkat growled, and tilted his head back as he sucked down a can of his own.

John watched with a little bemusement as the troll's throat bobbed up and down, not seemingly bothered by the carbonation as he gulped half the can down in one go.

Sipping his own coke more sedately, John grinned as Karkat crushed the empty can in a fist and then pitched it towards the recycling bin, missed, and had to get up to put it away properly.

"You did good, Egbert," Karkat said as he flopped down beside him again, stretching an arm across the back of the sofa.

John nearly choked on a mouthful of sweet carbonated beverage. "I did?"

Karkat's yellow eyes glared at him sidelong. Now that he had reached full adulthood, there was no hiding his blood colour, John knew. His irises were a brilliant crimson, and were, truth be told, a little creepier than they used to be. Fiercer. But pretty, too.

Uh, he hadn't just thought that. John found his cheeks growing a little hot, and he looked away.

"I mean, thanks," John said hastily, taking another gulp of coke to try to hide the odd reaction. He set the half-drunk can aside and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "You were really amazing," he said quietly. "You got that guy going, and knew exactly what he needed. I tried to encourage him, but basically I didn't do anything."

"Thompson panics sometimes," Karkat said dismissively. "Especially when there's a quick deadline. I've had to browbeat him before, though it's never been quite this bad. But you're selling yourself short." Karkat prodded John in the shoulder with a claw, causing him to look up. "I think what you said made him feel good, and that's not a bad thing. It gave him some confidence, so good job."

John smiled, feeling a rush of warmth from the praise. One nice thing about getting praised by Karkat - you knew he had to mean it, because he'd _never_ bother saying something nice if he didn't completely mean what he said.

"You know, at first I wasn't sure I was going to like it here," John said cheerfully, smiling at the troll who had once been his best alien friend in the whole world. "But I'm really glad that I got to work with you, Karkat. It's been so long. I really missed you!"

Karkat kissed him.

This wasn't like that snarling, hate-filled kiss of the day before. Karkat leaned forward and pressed his lips to John's, aggressive, but not angry, and his teeth held in check. It was warm, and passionate, and despite the forcefulness, Karkat's lips were soft and moist against John's.

John yelped in surprise and tried to pull back, but Karkat's hand was at the back of his neck, holding him firmly but gently. Karkat pressed forward and John fell backwards onto the sofa, the compact weight of the troll on top of him.

 _What is he doing what is he doing, what the fuck--_

John broke the kiss by turning his head to the side, gasping a little as his heart pounded a mile a minute. "Karkat, wait! Hang on a second."

Karkat made a soft, growling noise in the back of his throat and latched onto John's ear with his teeth, sending pleasant tingles shooting down the back of John's neck.

John yelped again, then grabbed Karkat by the shoulders and _shoved_. "I said stop!"

Karkat's teeth were torn away from John's ear with a flash of pain, but John was too angry to care. Giving Karkat another hard push, John squirmed out from under the troll's weight, standing up and taking a few steps back. "Holy shit, what was _that_ for?!"

Karkat glared daggers at him for a few moments, then stood up. "Gogdamnit Egbert! I'm trying everything I can think of to give you what you fucking want!"

And then he turned on his heel, head down, fists clenched at his sides and trembling, and stalked towards the exit.


	3. Chapter 3

> **Past John: Get pitied**

Sex with a troll was pretty different from sex with a human. Not that John really knew what sex with a human was like. He'd had a few stolen kisses behind the gym with Cindy Ferguson, and a bit of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' with that asshole, Brent whatever-his-last-name-was in the gym locker room.

But those sorts of things had only cemented the fact that he only really wanted to get naked and touch one person in the universe, and that person was Karkat Vantas.

Once he had concluded that, he really never looked at anyone else.

He nuzzled in close, grinning foolishly. They had done it. Really done it, for the first time. And it had been awkward and a little weird and Karkat's body was definitely not a normal _boy's_ body. Not a human boy, anyway, and from the look Karkat had given him at first, Karkat felt the same way about his own.

But now he lay hot and sticky and panting next to the troll on a few blankets and pillows, on the floor of Karkat's apartment. A few scratches on his back stung, but he didn't mind. He didn't know if he was really gay or not, but he was definitely Karkatsexual, and he supposed that was fine.

"I love you," he whispered, snuggling in close. "I really love you, Karkat."

"Yeah," Karkat grunted, scraping claws through John's unruly hair. "I know, fuckass. You don't have to keep saying it, like an idiot."

John swallowed. He knew what Karkat was like, and most of the time it didn't bother him. But he had thought that _now_ , after they'd spent so much time alone together, and kissed so many times, and even _had sex_ , that Karkat would be willing to say what he really felt.

They had kissed, and sort of dated, but John really wasn't very sure. It was always John initiating, asking Karkat on dates or leaning in to kiss, and if anyone else was around to see them, Karkat always turned away and shoved him aside.

They _were_ dating, right?

"Karkat?" John asked softly.

"Hmm?" Karkat lay on his back, one hand buried in John's hair and his eyes, the irises just starting to turn a muddy crimson as he neared adulthood, staring up at the ceiling.

"You love me, too, right? I mean...we're dating, aren't we? We're boyfriends, not just, uh..."

Karkat stiffened and raised his head, glaring straight into John's blue eyes. "What the fuck is wrong with you? You're the most pathetic, disgustingly stupid creature I have ever laid eyes on. Every time I see you, I can barely comprehend how completely pitiable you are."

John pulled back, stung by the unexpected barrage of vitriol. "What?"

The troll blinked and sat up. "Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't know how I felt about this whole ridiculous relationship?"

Every cell of John's body had gone cold. Sure, Karkat had told him about pity, but this didn't sound like what he thought of as 'troll pity-love'. Karkat didn't love him. He thought he was stupid and pathetic and useless, like he had _always_ thought. And he thought John wanting a relationship with him was ridiculous.

And John had just let Karkat fuck him, when Karkat didn't even _love_ him.

"Well if that's the way you want to be, fine! God, you're such an asshole! I don't know why I ever said I wanted you to be my boyfriend!"

Karkat jerked back. John jumped to his feet. He could feel Karkat's eyes burning into him as he pulled on his clothes as fast as he could.

"Well if you think I'm such an asshole, why don't you get the fuck out of my apartment!" Karkat snapped. "I don't know what fucking games you're playing, but you can just fuck off!"

"I will!"

Tears burning in his eyes, John absconded before Karkat could move or do anything other than stare at him with open-mouthed shock.

======>

> **Current John: Man up and confront Karkat**

John watched Karkat go, his jaw slack, then raced after him with a snarl. How dare Karkat abscond after forcing a kiss on him and then acting as if it was _John_ who was in the wrong here! How dare he leave after saying something that ridiculous?

He slammed out the front door of the publishing house and ran across the parking lot, where he could see Karkat heading towards one of the few cars left in the parking lot - a sleek-looking silver Honda.

"Hey! Fuckass!" John shouted angrily, putting on a bit of speed. He had always wanted to say that.

Karkat opened his car door, then turned and glared at John, folding his arms. "What?"

John caught up to him and growled up at the slightly-taller troll. "What the fuck, Karkat? Seriously, what do you want from me?"

"What do I want?" Karkat bared two rows of needle-like teeth, but John didn't back down. "What do you think I want, Egbert?"

"I think you're an asshole!" John snapped. "Why are you playing with me like this - _again_? I always thought you were pretty decent, if you just ignored all that capslock and anger. But this is the second time you've treated me this way, and I won't let you do it!"

" _Playing_ with you?" Karkat snarled. "What the fuck are you talking about, Egbert? This isn't a game anywhere but inside your slime-rotted skull."

John's heart was pounding, but he was determined to have this out with Karkat. He couldn't work with the troll if he was going to toy with his heart in this way. Maybe Karkat thought it was a fun way to troll him, but John had to make him understand that it was not cool. "I don't know if you're trying to troll me, or think this is funny, or what," he said. "But I think you should apologize to me, right now. Because it really hurts for you to act like this."

Karkat stared at him, dumbfounded. "You think _I_ should apologize to _you_?"

John raised his chin, though his lower lip was trembling a bit. Those crimson eyes were even more frightening when filled with rage than they had been when they were young. "Yes, I do."

Karkat lunged forward, grabbing John by the collar and pointing one long talon at his face. "I should apologize to you? You! The bulge-biter who seduced me, and waited until I was baring my heart, before slamming the fucking door in my face. Was it some kind of prank? Did you think it was fucking _funny_ to make me pity you and then walk out of my life? Did you even care that I never trolled you after that, huh? You think _I_ should apologize?"

John flailed when Karkat grabbed him, but went slack as the troll ranted at him at the top of his lungs, staring. Finally, he wrenched himself away, feeling the collar of his shirt tear with a purring noise, but not caring. "I didn't seduce you! I was in love with you, Karkat! But you were just playing with me. You said you thought the idea of being in a relationship was ridiculous, and that I was stupid and pathetic for wanting to be your boyfriend!"

"YOU ARE THE BIGGEST FUCKING MORON I HAVE EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF WASTING MY TIME ON," Karkat all but screamed in John's face. "I told you I pitied you! You knew what that meant! That was what I thought you _wanted_! And then you just threw it back in my face, and walked right out of my life, and I never wanted to pity anyone but you! Just you, you fucking nook-humping piece of slime-covered hoofbeast shit!"

There was a short silence as the world seemed to hold its collective breath. Both troll and human were slightly red in the face, and John was starting to realize that he had made a huge, huge, terrible mistake. Ten years ago, he had overreacted to a misunderstanding and walked out of Karkat's life, and they had both been too angry, hurt, and frightened to contact the other.

John had never seen Karkat look so angry, before, and now he understood why. Now, perhaps it was too late to make everything right.

It was all his fault.

Karkat drew in a breath, and John braced himself for more shouting, but when he spoke it was calm and cold, and with every word Karkat's lips peeled back from his teeth in an obvious challenge. "I always said if I saw you again I'd make you pay," he said. "But when I saw you yesterday, I realized that you weren't trying to hurt me, back then. It's just that the single neuron that continues to sputter away in your brain didn't understand. I realized that you were asking for human love, back then, not pity."

John swallowed. He wasn't really sure that was right, but it sort of was.

"And I also realized that after all this time, you probably don't love me anymore," Karkat went on, sliding into the car and turning the key in the ignition. "So I'm going to make you love me again, John Egbert. I'm going to make you love me, and despair. And then you'll understand just how much hell you put me through. And then I'm going to make you the happiest human on this ugly ball of rock you call Earth, whether you like it or not."

He slammed the car door closed, gave John a harsh smirk, then gunned the engine and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.

John stared at the cloud of dust, exhaust and smoke he had left behind, and realized that he truly hated Karkat Vantas.

"As if I would ever love you again!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, knowing Karkat couldn't hear him.

He turned and stomped off towards the bus shelter. There was just enough time for him to catch the last train to take him back to his apartment.

======>

> **Current John: Go home**

John sat slumped on the train, as far down as he could sit and still have his butt on the uncomfortable, hard chair. Now that he'd had a little time to calm down and actually pick apart what Karkat had said, he was starting to figure out what the troll was actually getting at.

Now that he'd thought about it, it sort of seemed to him like Karkat was still in love with him, or maybe in pity with him, or whatever he had always been. And like John had realized earlier, before Karkat really pissed him off, the whole misunderstanding and absconding thing had been John's action at first.

Sure, Karkat hadn't tried to stop him, but John hadn't contacted Karkat, either. He had allowed himself to wallow in his emotions and by the time he started to recover, he had just been pissed off that Karkat never trolled him to apologize, so he had decided to wait for Karkat to contact him first. Only Karkat had probably been equally pissed off and hurt, and expecting John to come to his senses, and apologize, and John hadn't done that, either.

They had both been idiots.

Now Karkat seemed to want to try to fix things, even if he was going about it in the most stupid way possible. Maybe those kisses had been Karkat's way of showing the stupid human that he still wanted him, and that he was now willing to show affection in public, or do whatever it was that humans did when they were in love.

In fact, he had probably gotten some of those moves from human romance movies.

John rubbed his face, smudging his glasses. _Maybe I should just...take him up on it,_ he thought. _I could tell him that I do want to date him, and we could start over._

He grimaced. No. It was too soon for that. John might be to blame for a lot of this, but Karkat had still acted like a jerk, and John wasn't sure he _wanted_ to try dating an emotionally-constipated troll right now.

He wasn't eighteen anymore, starry-eyed over the idea of love, and breathless at Karkat's kisses. He was an adult, a professional, and _so what_ that he hadn't found anyone else in the intervening time? That didn't mean he had to just throw himself at Karkat's feet and thank him for deigning to take him back.

Especially when he had propositioned him in such an assholish way!

In fact, it was entirely possible that Karkat didn't love him at all. He was acting like he was angry, even more than usual. It was likely that Karkat just wanted to set John up, make him fall in love, then break his heart into tiny, tiny pieces as revenge. He had said that he wanted to make John pay, and revenge was a very troll thing to do.

The more John thought about that possibility, the more likely it seemed, and the more angry he became.

The train pulled up at his stop and he got up, stomping off the platform and down the street towards his building. That was right. If he just threw himself at Karkat now, Karkat would think that John was a doormat. He would think that all of this yelling, and throwing his weight around had cowed him, and John would be in an even worse fix than before.

No, he had to hold him off, for now. Maybe someday they could date, if Karkat even wanted to date him, but definitely not now! And probably not ever, if Karkat didn't stop acting like a jerk - which he probably never would!

He climbed the steps and walked down the hall to his door, his head down as he sorted through his keys, not paying attention to where he was going.

"Already ready to grovel for my forgiveness and beg me to take you back, Egbert? That was faster than I expected."

John stopped dead in front of his door at the sound of the familiar voice, and looked up. Karkat stood a few feet down the hall in front of John's neighbour's door, a bag of groceries in one hand and a set of keys in the other, and a surprised expression on his face.

They stared at each other.

"No, I'm not going to beg you for anything! What are you doing here?" John demanded. "This is my apartment, right here." He gestured at the door he was in the midst of unlocking.

Karkat blinked crimson eyes slowly, then grinned. "Well, this is my apartment. Right here." He unlocked his own door and opened it, his eyes slitting a bit. "Want to come in, Egbert?"

John reddened and fought with his door until it popped open. "No! Hell no! Fuck off, Karkat!"

He slammed the door and locked it for good measure, then slid down it to sit on the floor, beating his head quietly against his knees. What were the odds that his new apartment was right next to his boss, right next to his ex-boyfriend, right next to the troll that he was trying desperately to hate while said troll attempted to browbeat him into falling in love with him?

Pretty damn good, apparently.

Fuck his life.


	4. Chapter 4

> **Current John: Avoid Karkat like he carries the bubonic plague**

"Gog fucking damnit, kk, what the fuck ith thith shit I'm hearing?!"

The troll banged his way into the cubicle, causing the less senior members of the romcom editing department to scatter. John ducked automatically down behind the stacks of scripts on his own desk, peeking out as the tall, skinny troll stalked past him towards Karkat.

It was Sollux.

Jegus, why hadn't John already known that Sollux worked here, too?

Karkat was completely unperturbed, or seemed so, until one noticed that his teeth were bared and a vein was popping in his forehead. He lowered the script he was reading and tilted his head up to look at the taller troll.

"What shit, precisely? You're going to have to be more specific, since shit pours in your ears and out your mouth on a daily basis."

Sollux gave a low, animalistic growl, and the four humans in the room all tensed like gazelle in the vicinity of two quarrelling lions. Even John felt a bit of unease, and he was pretty much used to trolls.

"The produtherth athked for changeth to the thcript," Sollux said, tapping his claws on the desk. His red and blue robotic eyes bored into Karkat through the two-tone glasses he wore.

John had first met Sollux when the troll was blind and had no teeth, but in the intervening years Sollux had used troll robotic technology to create himself new eyes, and the teeth had grown back, of course, giving him back that cute lisp.

Those things had both happened before John lost contact with Karkat. He hadn't seen Sollux since that time, either, but they hadn't ever been close. Apparently Sollux and Karkat were still close, though.

John had to wonder how close.

Then he wondered why he should care. He shouldn't! He tried to put his head down and ignore the argument, but it was difficult.

"Those jellyfish who have somehow managed to dress themselves in suits and learn just enough English to call themselves producers have asked me to _cut down_ the script to take out half the explanation of the damn troll romance!" Karkat shot back.

"That'th right," Sollux said. "Tho what?"

"And I said no! If I cut out that much of the dialogue, the human audience will completely lose all the impact of the romance, because they won't fucking understand it. It's a fucking _romantic comedy_ , nookfucker. What is the fucking point if the romance is gutted?"

John didn't think he'd heard Karkat swear this much since he was a teenager. It was as if he'd reverted, in the presence of his childhood friend.

Then he remembered how he and Dave had had a watergun fight the day before John started working here, and he realized that was probably to be expected.

"Look, the thcript hath come out fifteen minuteth too long, tho--"

" _So_ , cut out some of the fucking panoramic establishing shots and get to the nitty gritty!" Karkat snarled back. "I'm not cutting out any of those words. They're pure fucking gold, and any nooksniffer who can't see that needs to go back to film school. Assuming any of them actually went."

Sollux groaned and leaned against the desk. "Why didn't you jutht tell them that at the planning meeting?"

"I _did_."

"Do you really think we can get it down to thithe without cutting out any dialogue?"

Karkat had started pretending to read the script again. John knew he was pretending, because he was smirking too much and his eyes weren't moving. Now he lifted his head and grinned at Sollux. "Of course we can."

Sollux returned the grin, showing about twice as many fangs as a troll was supposed to have. "I'll talk to them."

"Good. Go do your job, Athhithhtant Director."

"Fuck you, kk."

"Likewise, Sollux."

Sollux turned away from Karkat and suddenly John found himself the object of that creepy blue and red gaze.

John offered the troll a smile and started to wave in greeting, but then Sollux' lips peeled back from his mouthful of teeth in an unmistakeable expression of loathing and challenge.

He froze, hand half-raised and his cheeks paling. And then Sollux swept past him and out of the cubicle without another word.

What the hell was that?

Silence reigned for a few moments before one of John's coworkers elbowed him in the side. "Hey Egbert. How are things going with Yamamoto?"

John blinked a few times, trying to reboot his brain. He seemed to be the only one who had caught that expression on Sollux' face, and Karkat seemed to be acting as if the yellow-blooded troll had never shown up at all, reading his script with a calm and unconcerned expression on his face.

Well, a heated scowl, which was about as calm and unconcerned as Karkat ever got.

In the month since starting work here, John had learned a lot. Last week Karkat had assigned him to a particular writer, Keith Yamamoto, who was working on the second instalment of a direct-to-tv miniseries. He was one of the mid-listers, not one of the heaviest hitters on the company payroll, but he was John's writer to manage, exclusively, though he had to run all of his changes by Karkat.

He glanced at the other man and smiled, trying to put the incident with Sollux out of his mind. "Oh, pretty good. He's running a little late with his script, though. I talked to him yesterday, and he said he still had twenty pages left to go."

His coworker's eyes widened a little, but he nodded. "Keep at him, okay? I used to work with Yamamoto, and he's usually reliable, but sometimes he freezes up."

John nodded and smiled gratefully, then reached for the phone. "Thanks for the tip!"

He worked steadily for a while, making another phone call to Yamamoto and confirming that he was working hard and would get the last of the draft to him soon, then working through a few drafts with his blue "red pencil". He absorbed himself in the work, forgetting all about the incident with Sollux.

After an hour or two, he picked up an armful of completed drafts and headed for the elevator to deliver them down to be mailed out to the authors. He waited for the elevator, then stepped inside when the door opened.

"Hey! Hold it!"

John tensed and slowly turned at the sound of Karkat's shout. He stared as the troll barrelled up the hall and the door began to close. He made no move to stop them.

At the last second, an arm slammed between the door and jamb and forced it wide again, revealing an irate face filled with snarling, sharp teeth.

"Thanks for holding it, Egbert," Karkat growled sarcastically, stepping inside.

"Oh, sorry," John said weakly. "I didn't see you."

"Are you fucking kidding--"

"Oh!" John started, as if suddenly recalling something very important. "This is my floor."

He darted out of the elevator, slipping out just as the door began to close again, and ignoring Karkat's shouted: "But you just got on, didn't you?!"

The door closed and John walked up the hall a few feet, pacing back and forth to make sure the elevator was really gone. Then he went back to the elevator and jabbed the button with his thumb, resisting an urge to beat his head gently against the wall.

A month of working for Karkat - and a month of making sure he was never alone with him. He had even gone so far as to try to hide down the hall around the corner if he arrived home at the same time as Karkat, waiting until the troll entered his apartment before rushing down to his own door and getting inside as quickly as possible.

Karkat was definitely starting to notice.

But John didn't know what else to do. He was determined not to give Karkat more chances to try to seduce him, no matter how weird and awkward those attempts had been so far.

Even now, the memory of those kisses often came upon him at inopportune times. At least a dozen times, while lying in bed and recalling it, he remembered that Karkat was just on the other side of the wall. Nearly every time he had thought maybe he should just get up, go next door, and tell Karkat he wanted to try again.

But he always shoved those feelings aside, along with the memories of those rough lips on his and the taste of Karkat's tongue in his mouth.

He still couldn't tell if Karkat really was in love with him, or just wanted to take some kind of revenge. And until he knew for sure, he was determined not to give Karkat another chance to break his heart.

It was awkward as hell. Karkat had started trying to find ways to catch him alone, like he had just done. And sometimes it was difficult to figure out ways of making sure he was never alone with his boss, without also compromising his ability to do his job well. John's pride - and his desire not to actually get fired - made things complicated.

But he just had to hold on as long as he could. Maybe if John held on long enough, Karkat would realize that it wasn't working, and give up on this weird idea of making John fall in love with him whether he liked it or not.

Overall? This was stupid.

======>

> **Past John: Edit all the scripts. All of them**

"Hey, fuckass, I've got a special job for you."

John looked up from the pile of corrections he was feverishly making into Karkat's red glare pinning him from across two desks. "Uh..."

He took a quick, furtive check around to make sure he wasn't alone in the cubicle, confirmed that two of his three coworkers were present, just so absorbed in what they were doing that they probably hadn't heard Karkat's endearment.

"You need something, Karkat?"

"Not right now," Karkat got up from his chair and bent, then picked up a banker's box brimming with binders of multicoloured scripts. He then set it on John's desk with a very heavy-sounding thud.

John groaned. "What the hell is this?"

" _This_ is every script I have edited since I started working here, five years ago," Karkat said, eyes narrowing. "Each one lovingly massaged and finessed into a perfect fucking masterpiece of cinematic beauty - or at least as close as I can come without having complete fucking autonomy and control over every aspect of film making."

Sometimes John wondered why Karkat hadn't become a director. He certainly had the drive to control everything, but John thought maybe he didn't have the people skills.

"Okaaaaaaaay," John said slowly, drawing out the word. "So what do you want me to do with them, filing?"

"No, idiot!" Karkat spat. "I want you to _study_ them. They've got all the editing marks, and you can see the multiple drafts as they progress. Learn from the fucking master. Only when the student can at least get through a fucking script without botching it all to hell, will the teacher grudgingly give him an author of his own to manage. Think you can manage that, Grasshopper?"

John stared at the mound of binders, too much to fit inside the box Karkat had used, and all shoved randomly inside willy-nilly. "You want me to read _all_ of these? I mean, study them? Which takes longer than just reading!"

"You got a problem with that, Egbert?" Karkat asked dangerously.

"I...well, it's not like I've never edited something before!" John protested. "I've been doing this a long time, Karkat. I know I have a lot to learn, but you act like I'm a complete newbie."

The more he participated in this conversation, the more resentful he became. Karkat was treating him like crap, probably because John wasn't responding to his advances - and in fact had been deliberately avoiding Karkat for the last three weeks - and that was completely unfair.

"Look," Karkat growled. "I know you're not a newbie, but editing scripts is completely different from editing comics. You don't know _shit_ about camera angles or lighting, and you're used to working with actual pictures to arrange the scripts around. Are there similarities? Yes, or else you wouldn't have been hired in the first damn place. But there is still a _lot_ you have to learn. And this is how you learn it, John. By looking at how it's done, and by doing it yourself. You've been doing a bit of the latter, and now you have to do some of the former."

This all sounded very...logical. John already knew that he didn't know anything about some of the more specialized parts of film-making, and hadn't realized when he applied for the job just how different it would be. But he was still feeling annoyed and stubborn.

"Well I still don't see how I can possibly read through _all_ of these, when I'm supposed to be working on all the stuff you've got me doing," John protested, waving a hand at the stacks of work that had been interrupted.

Karkat's response was in a silky, almost sweet tone. "Who the fuck said you should be wasting your time with this when you should be doing work I've assigned you? You do this on your own time."

"What? That's not fair!"

"You saying you can't do it?" Karkat smirked and reached for the box. "I thought so. Your pride can't deal with working for silly romcoms. You should probably quit now, Egbert, because your career isn't going anywhe--"

John jumped to his feet and snatched the box out of Karkat's hands. "I can do it! I'll show you I can do it! I'm going to be the best damn editor this entire company has ever seen, and then I'll take _your_ job."

Karkat blinked at him once, then grinned slyly and turned around, walking back to his own desk. "I thought so."

The following morning, John dragged the box into the office and set it triumphantly down on the desk in front of Karkat. "I'm done!" Then he yawned so big he cracked his jaw.

Karkat stared at the box, then up at John. "Done what?"

"I read all the scripts! Actually, they were really interesting. I learned a lot about your technique, such as how you ensure pacing--"

"You read _all_ of them?" Karkat was staring at him open-mouthed now. "In one night? That's bullshit! How much sleep did you get?"

"I haven't slept yet," John admitted, covering another yawn with his hand. "But why do you look so surprised? You know that when I say I'll do something, I do it."

"For fuck's sake, Egbert," Karkat rolled his eyes. "I wasn't expecting you to do it _right now_. Just a little at a time, when you had time."

"...Oh."

Karkat shook his head, then rummaged in a drawer and pulled out his rolodex. He shuffled through it, while John gazed at him glassily and considered whether a third coffee would wake him up any more than the two he'd already consumed in the last hour had done.

Then Karkat handed him a card. "Keith Yamamoto," he growled. "Call him and tell him he's got a week to get that next script in for the miniseries. He's yours, Egbert. Don't fuck this up."

John blinked, looking down at the card, which bore the author's name and contact information. "Mine? Really? Don't you even want to see what I've learned?"

"You can handle it," Karkat said, shoving the drawer closed and picking up the box of scripts. "Just don't send any corrections back to him without giving them to me to look at, first."

"Oh wow," John beamed as Karkat swept past him, carrying the box. "Thanks, Karkat!"

======>

> **Current John: Overhear a telephone call**

"Hey, Keith, sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to check one last time before I left the office. So how's the script going now? I, uh, kinda expected to get a couple of pages before five o'clock, and the fax machine's been pretty quiet, so I thought maybe it wasn't wor-- Oh... uh huh? Well do you think you could send me what you've got tonight? I'll give you my personal fax number if it would help."

"Karkat! Mr. Captor is on the phone."

"What the fuck? Why wouldn't he call _my_ line?"

"...So there's the number. Uh, do your best, okay? I know it's been tough, but I know you can do it!"

"How should I know? He wants to know if you want to get drinks after work."

"Tell that grubfucker that I'm too busy for a pathetic nooksack like him. Use those exact words."

"Listen, I'll be sitting by the fax machine tonight until midnight if I have to. You can do this! You've got hours and hours."

"Uh...nooksack? Okay, I'll tell him..."

John hung up the phone and finally tuned back into the conversation going on around him.

Wait, drinks? Sollux on the phone?

John looked over at his coworker, who was looking very confused as he repeated Karkat's words into the receiver. Then he looked at Karkat, who was trying to look sour, but his lips were twitching again in that expression that John was starting to recognize as Karkat's version of a smile.

"Uh, boss? Mr. Captor says, uh, that if you don't meet him for drinks, he's going to push your busy nub right between your shame globes and see if you can still do your job. Only then he said that you probably always do that, anyway, so never mind."

What the hell was going on here? Karkat and Sollux were meeting for drinks? Or not meeting for drinks, but arguing through the confused medium of one of John's coworkers about whether or not they would be possibly meeting for drinks later?

Karkat's twitching was getting more spastic.

"Okay, _fine_. Tell that bulge-sucking slice of grubloaf that--"

Before he could finish the sentence, the coworker shoved the receiver into Karkat's hands and absconded.

There was a short silence while the poor man grabbed a few files and darted out of the room with a rather incoherent excuse shouted over his shoulder. Then Karkat burst out laughing and John could hear more laughter coming from the receiver, even from where he sat.

Karkat lifted the phone to his ear and began speaking in rapid Alternian, the clicks and growls interspersed with more laughter and gestures that told John that probably, they had either set this up as a prank, or Sollux had performed a prank and Karkat was congratulating him.

Either way, John's prankster gambit was tingling.

Oh my god, they were totally flirting with each other!

John felt a lump well up in his throat and he bent his head over his desk, scribbling furiously on his notepad and trying to tune out the continuing conversation.

In fact, Sollux was probably Karkat's boyfriend, or matesprit, or whatever they were called! And that meant John had no chance at all, and Karkat's kisses and declarations that he was going to make John fall in love with him was just a prank as well!

And wait. Just why was he so upset about this?

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, but the lump still sat in his throat and tried to rise no matter how he swallowed.

This was it. He had to find out for sure.


	5. Chapter 5

> **Current John: Spy on your boss**

Five thirty and still no script. John stared with despair at the clock, then beat his head gently against the desk for a while. Nearly everyone else had already packed up and gone home, and even Karkat was in the midst of leaving. One of John's coworkers was still on the phone, possibly talking to someone who might have been his girlfriend. John wasn't really clear on the romantic permutations of his three coworkers - or Karkat, for that matter.

"Tell him to fax it to you on your fucking personal line, Egbert," Karkat snarled as he walked past John's desk, a folder of scripts under his arm. John sometimes wondered if Karkat ever stopped working. Or slept.

"I did," John moaned to his desk blotter. "I mean, I said if he didn't get it done in time to fax me at home, yeah."

"Then go the fuck home," Karkat snarled. "You're wasting oxygen here." And then he was gone.

John made a show of packing things up, taking a few extra minutes to craft an email to Keith Yamamoto to remind him to send the script to his personal fax machine tonight instead of to the office one, since he was leaving now. He added a few more encouraging touches, hoping it might help, then he shut down his computer and straightened up his desk.

Finally, sure that Karkat must definitely have left the building by now and he wouldn't accidentally run into him as they were both leaving, he walked down the hall to the elevator.

Amazingly, his luck held until he got off on the first floor and rounded the corner into the lobby. There he saw Karkat standing by the front doors, completely blocking them, and with a squeak, he dodged back behind the corner again.

The security guard at his station looked at him oddly, but John determinedly ignored him and peeked around the corner again. _Damnit, Karkat!_ he thought. _Why are you always around when I don't want you to be? What are you doing?_

A longer glance told him what he was doing. John hadn't seen it immediately, because of a pillar blocking his view, but as he peered around the corner Karkat walked a few paces closer to the door and the one he was talking to came into view, following him.

It was Sollux. Of course.

And it looked like they were arguing. Again.

John strained to listen, but with the distance and the sound-dampening features of the huge lobby, he couldn't make out much. And there was no way he could get closer without stepping straight into view. For all he knew, they were arguing in Alternian, anyway.

Sollux snarled something and Karkat snapped back in an angry tone, at which point Sollux' manner turned to what John could only interpret as cajoling. He put a hand on Karkat's shoulder, but the shorter troll shook him off and began to pace, running his hands through his curls and gesticulating wildly as he ranted.

Occasionally, as John watched, Sollux interjected something and got snarled at for his efforts, but gradually Karkat seemed to calm down. The yellow-blood touched his shoulder again, saying something in a more gentle tone, as if concerned, and John felt his heart lurch as Karkat looked up at Sollux with an expression that he could only describe as hopeful.

He leaned a little closer, straining his ears as the two trolls spoke to one another quietly, and then Karkat laughed at something Sollux said.

He actually laughed. Again.

My god. They really were dating.

John felt his throat close and swallowed a few times. Stupid stupid dumb. Why would he even care about that? _Good for them_ if they were dating! At least maybe Karkat would get off John's back!

Now he was starting to feel foolish standing here and spying on them. What was he even doing? It was obvious that Karkat had no interest in him, now, and there was probably nothing to worry about.

With an internal grimace, he straightened up and marched right around the corner, pretending not to notice the two trolls even though he was walking almost right towards them. He kept his head high and didn't look at them as he neared.

"...hang out again thoon, kk? Maybe I can come by your plathe thometime?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever fuckass," Karkat said. His tone sounded affectionate, despite how off-handed he was. "You're always so fucking insecure. We'll hang out, okay?"

"Thorry. You know what I'm like--"

John burst through the doors and had to fight not to break into a run. He didn't even know if Sollux and Karkat had noticed him walk past them - it didn't seem like they had - and that made him feel even worse. It really did seem as though Karkat's big romantic thing had either been pretend, or he had gotten over him pretty fast, after all.

He got halfway across the parking lot before he _did_ break into a run, head down and eyes burning. Stupid Karkat for saying all that stuff he didn't even really mean.

Stupid John, for believing him, even a little.

By the time he reached the train station, he had calmed down enough to feel stupid over the whole thing. What was he, fifteen? He knew the score now, and it was almost a relief. There was no reason to continue his stupid campaign of making sure he was never alone with Karkat, anymore, so thank goodness.

Within a minute or two, the train pulled up to the platform, and he joined the stream of commuters who flowed onto it. It was pretty busy, and he found himself jammed almost in the laps of some people who were sitting down, hanging onto the overhead rail. He stared determinedly out the window over the head of a woman with her nose buried in her Kindle, and tried to do what everyone else did - completely ignore his surroundings until his stop came.

The train pulled away with a slight jolt, moving out of the station, and a silky voice whispered in his ear. " _Finally_ I've got you where you can't fucking run away, Egbert."

John jumped and didn't whirl so much as elbow his way around to face Karkat. The troll's lips were peeled back from his teeth in a self-satisfied smirk. One that John found made his heart begin to pound just at the sight of it.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" John exclaimed. They were almost nose to nose in the packed subway, and he tried to shrink away, only to accidentally step on the foot of Kindle Lady.

"Gee, I wonder. I happen to live very near a stop on this exact train route, and I'm clearly on my way home, so what do you think I'm doing here?" Karkat said with heavy sarcasm. "Don't strain your thinkpan figuring it out, though. I'll give you time."

John curled his fingers into fists. "You have a car, though!"

"And I can't be environmentally conscious once in a while?" Karkat returned. "Save a tree or two? I'm surprised at your lack of faith in my goody-goody nature."

"Ughhhh, fine," John groaned, waving his free arm and nearly smacking a nearby teenager in the face. "Whatever. You can take the train all you want." Irritably, he turned back around and stared at the window again, determined to ignore Karkat.

But Karkat seemed equally determined not to be ignored.

"So how bad are things with Yamamoto, really?" he asked. John felt heat radiating from Karkat's chest as the troll leaned in close, speaking almost directly into his ear. He hoped the window wasn't reflecting his features as he felt his cheeks heat up.

"Uh...not that bad. No, things are terrible, actually. He's still ten pages down and I keep trying to encourage him, but I don't know if he'll get them done tonight or not," John growled. Maybe they were just going to talk about work. That would be fine.

"Thought so," Karkat said. The troll shrugged, and John felt it as his chest rubbed against his back with the movement. "Well, you'll probably figure it out. Or maybe I'll fire you."

Four more stops. God. How was he going to make it?

"You wouldn't really fire me," John muttered.

"Maybe not," Karkat conceded. "So why are you avoiding me, Egbert?"

John felt his breath freeze in his chest. "I...I'm not avoiding you!"

Karkat leaned even closer. The woman with the Kindle looked up, stared, then quickly looked down again with a strange sort of smile on her face.

"You are _avoiding_ me, Egbert. Don't try to deny it, because you're not being subtle about it at all. You and subtlety aren't even passing acquaintances, you're complete and total strangers. You wouldn't know subtlety if it came up and introduced itself to you, then bashed you in the face with a large mallet."

"What are you talking about?" John demanded.

Three more stops. Please, please, please.

"You think I wouldn't notice, when you literally have not been alone with me in a room for over a month? You think I didn't see you, hiding in the fucking _corridor_ , waiting for me to go into my apartment before you would show yourself? You think I haven't cottoned on to it, when you jump out of every elevator as soon as I get onto it?"

"You're crazy," John exclaimed, feeling his ears start to burn. "You're, uh, totally misinterpreting a whole bunch of coincidences."

"You're afraid that I'll win," Karkat said smugly, and John felt sharp teeth close lightly over his earlobe and give a tug. "Because I _am_ winning."

Tingles ran down John's spine, followed by a rush of heat. "Winning what!?" he snapped, starting to turn around again as anger pounded in his chest. "This isn't a fucking game. I know what you're doing, Karkat, and it's not going to work!"

Two more sto--

The train lurched and slammed on the brakes a bit too fast as it entered the station. John wasn't holding onto anything as he turned around, and he fell forward with a yell.

A strong arm wrapped around him and held him close, John's head pressed to Karkat's chest. He could hear the troll's heart pounding very hard right next to his ear, the lungs heaving a bit as if Karkat had been running.

"You okay?" Karkat said as the train came to a stop and John realized he was clinging to his shirt, face pressed into his chest, with only Karkat's arm steadying him.

John pushed up and turned away, grabbing hard onto the overhead rail again. "Yeah."

"Maybe this isn't the best place to talk about this," Karkat offered quietly.

"Probably not," John agreed wryly, staring out the window as the train pulled away from the station once again.

One more stop.

======>

> **Current John: Edit that script**

During the last leg of their journey home, John avoided any more embarrassing or aggravating conversations by the simple expedient of refusing to say anything, no matter what Karkat said. Karkat did try a couple more times to engage him, then gave up in obvious frustration after John simply kept walking, eyes forward and lips pressed firmly together.

Only when he had the door to his apartment closed did John relax. He sat down on his sofa with a groan, then fell over sideways onto the cushions with a thump.

Why was Karkat still bugging him and acting like this stupid game of his was still going on? Did he really think that John didn't know that he and Sollux were together, after everything that had happened today?

He knew that he could have asked the questions as they were walking home, but he'd been so angry that he didn't trust himself to say anything that wouldn't ultimately result in getting himself fired.

Maybe he should write Karkat a letter. Then he could keep redrafting it until it wasn't just a whole bunch of profanity and accusations, which were all that was in his head right now.

What a lame idea. And yet...

He got up and wandered over to the fax machine, grabbing a pen out of the cup on his kitchen counter as he walked. He could write out what he felt and his questions, and then fax it over to Karkat if it didn't seem too lame by the time he'd finished. And if it _was_ too lame, he could just rip up the letter and never speak of it.

He reached out to grab a sheet of paper from his fax machine, then paused as the machine rang under his fingers. A moment later, pages began spitting out.

"Oh my god," he exclaimed, grabbing up the first few pages and looking them over hungrily. "Keith, you did it!"

Forgetting all about the letter for now, he scurried to the kitchen table and sat down, poring over the script as more pages printed on the fax machine.

A couple of hours later, dinner eaten and another cup of coffee consumed, John finished his third read-through. The script was marked up with blue scribbles, and he was confident that he'd done all he could. He could send it back, and Yamamoto would definitely have time to get the changes made by the deadline.

The problem was, he had to run all of his changes past Karkat.

He sighed and stared at his door despondently. Karkat was just next door, there was no need to wait until tomorrow morning. But the last thing he wanted to do was see Karkat again tonight, especially in _his_ apartment, where it would be difficult to escape and there was no chance of interruption.

Then suddenly, a lightbulb seemed to go off in his brain, and he looked over at the fax machine. Perfect! There was no need to go over there. What would he do if Karkat lived across town, after all? He'd fax the pages over.

Jumping to his feet, John trotted happily to the fax machine and dialled, then watched as the pages fed through.

Ten seconds later, his cellphone rang.

John frowned and looked at the caller ID, seeing Karkat's name, then answered it.

"Hello?" Obviously he hadn't finished editing yet, so maybe there was something wrong with the fax--

"GET OVER HERE, YOU STUPID NOOKBRAINED GRUB. WHY ARE YOU FAXING ME WHEN YOU LIVE TEN FEET AWAY?"

Karkat didn't even wait for John to answer before hanging up on him.

His ear ringing a little, John sighed. There really was nothing for it but to go over there.

He grabbed the sheaf of edited pages and walked out his front door, then down the hall to Karkat's apartment. He stood there for a moment, shifting from foot to foot, before his eyes were caught by a feature he hadn't really noticed before.

Karkat's door had a mail slot.

John grinned and bent over, quietly opening the slot and attempting to shove the sheaf of pages through it. He could just go back to his apartment and call Karkat to discuss the changes.

As he struggled with the pages, the door suddenly opened and bashed him right in the top of the head.

Seeing stars, John sat down on the floor with a grunt, rubbing his head and feeling tears squeeze out of his eyes. "Ow..."

Karkat stared down at him with arms folded. "Get the fuck in here, idiot. Fuck, if I see any more of your utter, unadulterated stupidity tonight, I may pay for your brain transplant myself to avoid doing a backwards pirouette right off the fucking handle."

"Sorry..." Head still throbbing, John struggled to his feet and shuffled into the apartment, flinching as he passed Karkat, half expecting the troll to grab him and kiss him again or something.

Karkat closed the door behind him, sighed irritably, and stomped deeper into the apartment. He pointed at the sofa as he passed it. "Sit the fuck down."

Nervously, John obeyed. The last time he was on a sofa in Karkat's vicinity, Karkat had pounced him. His eyes darted longingly towards the door every ten seconds as Karkat went into the kitchen and rummaged for a while.

Then an ice bag dropped into John's lap.

He yelped as cold instantly froze his genitals, and scooped it up. Karkat snorted with laughter and sat down in the chair across from him, setting two mugs of coffee down. John sheepishly held the pack to the top of his head.

"Give me what you've got," Karkat said, holding out a hand to take the pages. "Let me see what you've done."

John handed him the sheaf of pages and Karkat began to read. John drank his coffee as the throbbing eased to cold numbness and he slowly started to fidget.

Finally Karkat lowered the pages. "This is pretty damn good," he said, almost grudgingly.

"Really?" John was almost startled. Fifteen minutes in Karkat's apartment and not only had Karkat completely failed to grope or kiss him in any way, but he was complimenting him.

"Yeah." Karkat sorted through the pages and then spread them out over the table between them. "But there are a few things. Here, look at the pacing in this section." He tapped a scene that John had scarcely touched. "The beats are all wrong."

"Beats?"

"Every movie is separated into beats," Karkat growled. "There are the beats of the whole structure, and each individual scene has a beat, too. If there are too many beats, or they don't come fast enough, the whole thing will drag. That's why dialogue has to do more than one thing, always, to keep things snappy. Here, we can eliminate half of this dialogue if we reword some things to convey more than one idea at a time..."

Karkat began circling things and rewriting them as he lectured, explaining the rhythm of a scene. John scooted over to sit beside him, watching in awe.

Not only did Karkat really know his stuff, but his passion was obvious. John found himself sneaking glances up at the face of the troll, admiring his concentration and the way he spoke. This wasn't just a job... this really was what Karkat loved.

Close to midnight, while both of them were yawning, Karkat had finally finished going over the entire thing with a fine-toothed comb and pointing out everything that John had either missed or done wrong and why. But while John's head was spinning and he wanted to crash, he felt like he'd never learned so much in his life. And he honestly felt really good about how he had spent the evening.

"Thanks, Karkat," he said warmly, taking the pages and tucking them under his arm. "I'll take these back and fax them off."

"No problem," Karkat said, yawning hugely and showing off every one of his sharp teeth despite his belated attempt to cover his mouth with one hand. "Oh, before you go."

John paused near the door and glanced back questioningly.

Karkat straightened up in his chair. "We both know you've been avoiding me, so there's no more to say about that. I just have one question." He got to his feet and approached John slowly, his crimson eyes narrowed and pinning John to the spot. "Is it because you're in love with me?"


	6. Chapter 6

> **Current John: Get a hand**

"Uhhhhh, Karkat?" John said, backpedalling as Karkat continued to approach at a homicidally slow, measured pace. "I'm sorry to break it to you, but that doesn't make any sense?"

Karkat scowled at him. "As if you would know sense if it came up and punched you in the bulge, John. Or whatever you call that part of your anatomy."

"You know what it's called!" John protested, feeling his cheeks redden a little. "You edit _romantic_ comedies for a living. The word 'penis' was in the script we edited tonight, at least twice!"

"Shut up." Karkat said, breaking into a grin that wasn't really reassuring, though the smile did reach his eyes.

Then the grin faded, replaced by that scowl once more. "Anyway, stop running away! I'm not going to lie to you, Egbert - this act of yours is getting really old. I know this is how humans act when they're in love - they pretend they don't like you, while simultaneously finding themselves in hilarious situations that throw them together with the object of their affection. But it really sucks to be the object in this situation, so knock it off!"

John's jaw dropped. Was he really serious? "That's not how humans act when they're in love! And I'm not in love with you!"

"Yes you are!"

John groped through the fog of Karkat's complete bugfuck insanity for a way to get himself out of this conversation without screwing up the really good progress they'd made tonight on their relationship not being completely messed up and confusing. "I...I...I have a girlfriend. So I can't possibly be in love with you," he lied desperately.

"You see?" Karkat exclaimed, throwing his hands up in disbelief. "That isn't even a remotely believable lie. You're just making this shit up to make me more interested and pursue you harder or something. But I'm trying to explain to you that it's not necessary."

"It's not unbelievable! It could totally be true!" John protested weakly.

"It's completely ridiculous, and all of this is driving me up the nearest vertical load-bearing structural support!"

"You're the ridiculous one!"

Karkat lunged for him and John jerked away with a nervous squeak, hitting the door with his back and stopping abruptly.

But instead of attacking, the troll merely pressed a hand to his shoulder, claws digging in slightly, and looked John over. "Don't be afraid," he said, a softer tone to his voice than John would have believed he was capable of. "I won't hurt you." His tone hardened slightly as he added: "Idiot."

John felt his breath catch in his throat at that gentle tone. Then Karkat sealed his lips to his, and they were kissing again - not all teeth like knives and growling like before, or even forceful and aggressive, but gentle and giving and sweet.

 _Oh my god, I didn't know it could be like this,_ John thought, his heart starting to beat very fast in his chest.

Though occasionally, as they shifted and their tongues tangled together, John felt a slight sting of one of Karkat's razor-sharp teeth, it was obvious the troll was trying to keep them under control, and he never tasted blood. Slowly, he relaxed, his arms coming up to wind around Karkat's neck as he gave himself over to the kiss, despite the small part of him whispering 'are you sure?' in the back of his mind.

Karkat made a soft, humming, warbling sound in the back of his throat as John's arms went around him, his own hands sliding down John's sides. One slipped around his waist, drawing him close, and John went willingly.

The other cupped his groin, kneading with the palm through his jeans.

John stiffened and their lips broke apart a little. "Uh..."

"Shhh..." Karkat purred, opening the fly and sliding his hand inside John's underwear.

John jumped and his knees went weak at the same time. "Oh my god," he gasped, pressing his forehead to Karkat's shoulder as the troll cautiously drew his cock out of his pants and began to stroke with a light, firm touch. "I, uh...Karkat? I'm not sure this is--"

"I'll take care of you, don't worry," Karkat murmured, and John felt himself slowly sinking down to the floor almost against his volition, encouraged by a hand around his waist and the maddening movements of Karkat's fingers on his dick.

 _Hopy shit, is this really happening?_ he thought dizzily, gasping and shuddering as Karkat stroked him, sitting on the floor now with his back still pressed hard to the unyielding surface of the door.

Karkat kissed him again, a soft growl of desire in the back of his throat, and there was no more protesting. Even the urge to protest was forgotten as the sensations grew more and more intense.

Then John's hips shifted and jerked, his breathing growing choppy and ragged as white fluid spilled over, coating Karkat's hand and leaving a few marks on his jeans.

For a few moments, pleasure and desire whited out John's mind. He didn't care that Karkat might hate him, or might be fucking with him, it just felt so _good_. And so what if they were sitting on a hard tile floor, totally clothed, while Karkat gave him a weird, random handjob?

Who cared about that?

Though actually, maybe John actually really _did_ care about that.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more surreal this became. Karkat was spouting lines from bad romcoms, and being all sweet and sugary, in a totally un-Karkatish way. It had to be fake!

Karkat was nuzzling his throat, making soft, pleased chirruping sounds and squirming against John's thigh in a manner that made it pretty plain what he wanted. He could feel the hardness of Karkat's bulge against his leg, and an odd writhing that he knew meant that Karkat was aroused.

"Get...get off, for a second!" John said, his breathing still ragged. He pushed Karkat off of him, earning a torrent of surprised oaths as John jumped to his feet, zipping up his pants. He couldn't believe this. Karkat had just seduced him, just like he had feared he would.

"What's wrong now?" Karkat asked, scrambling to his feet. Despite the way John had pushed him back, he leaned closer eagerly, like a dog on a scent. "Is the floor uncomfortable? The sofa is right over--"

"I don't want the sofa," John snapped, tears of anger and shame coming to his eyes. He could never figure out what was going on in Karkat's mind. "Get off me, Karkat!"

He quickly gathered up the scattered pages of the script and reached for the door handle.

Karkat was almost incoherent, his mouth working and only vague sounds coming out. Finally he managed to get a few words past the blockage in his throat. "You're leaving _now_?!"

"Yes! Do I have to say everything a million times? You never listen!" John snapped, ripping the door open and diving through it, leaving a stunned and wordless Karkat behind.

The door shut with a bang. As he turned to head back down the hall, he ran straight into a rather bony and skinny wall.

Sollux staggered back, giving a shout, as John rebounded off of his chest. John stopped dead, rubbing his forehead, which had collided with Sollux' chin, and stared up at the troll in dismay and confusion.

"What..what are you doing here, Sollux?" he asked, dashing the tears quickly from his eyes. The shock had brought him at least partly back to his senses, though he was still angry.

"Vithiting kk," Sollux said, looking hard at him with that same loathing he had displayed before. "What the fuck are you doing here, Egbert?"

"I live here!" John said. At Sollux' disbelieving stare, he pointed down the hall a ways. "I mean, I live there. But I was working on a script with Karkat, and uh, now I'm done. So. I'm going home."

"Right," Sollux said in a tone that made it clear he didn't believe a word. He looked him up and down, his glowing plastic eyes lingering on the wet marks on John's jeans. "Well get home, then."

"Right," John echoed, and pushed past Sollux, too tired and irritable to care why Sollux hated him right now. But as he passed him, Sollux grabbed his arm and whispered in his ear.

"I'm warning you, Egbert. If you aren't theriouth about him, then thtay away from Karkat. I will fucking kill you if you break hith heart, you got that?"

John snarled and shoved the troll hard, jerking his arm out of his grasp. "All I want is for him to leave _me_ alone!"

The door suddenly opened again and Karkat looked out, regarding the two of them with a sullen expression. "What the fuck are you two losers shouting about out here?"

Sollux glared at John, then turned to Karkat and lifted a hand, which was full of a bag of what looked like groceries. "I brought meatloaf. It'th almotht like grubloaf, only without the grubth."

"I'm going home," John snapped, glaring at Karkat. He could only keep it up for a millisecond, after which he looked away, his cheeks heating up. "It's late. And...and I'm obviously not wanted here, anyway."

He knew the latter was just an excuse. He had already absconded. But Karkat apparently had another guest at -- he checked his watch, and what the hell? -- one o'clock in the morning. Who came over to someone's house at one o'clock, with groceries?

"It's not that... fuck." Karkat glared from Sollux to John and back. "Sollux, get in here. John." He drew in a breath and let it out. "I'll call you or something, okay?"

"Don't bother. I'll s-see you tomorrow." John felt tears well up again and fled before he could truly embarrass himself, fumbling his key into the lock and then slamming the door behind him once he was inside.

He was so confused, and the way his body still quivered and his knees were still weak from the orgasm really didn't help. He sank down to sit against his door and buried his face against his knees, grimacing as he felt the wet spots soak through his shirt.

Was Karkat dating Sollux, or was Sollux just pursuing Karkat? Did Karkat really love John and was just really clueless about how to deal with it, or was he just toying with him?

He listened to the soft, indistinct murmur of voices through the wall for a while, then got up morosely and moved to his fax machine to send back the changes they had made.

His lips were still tingling, and all he wanted to do was go back to Karkat, tell him that yes, yes, he had loved him forever and still loved him, and cover him with more of those sweet kisses.

There had to be something wrong with him. That was the only real explanation. No one who was normal could possibly be in a situation this screwed up.

======>

> **Current John: Take responsibility**

Sometimes John wondered if he'd ever have a good night sleep again. If he wasn't up until ridiculous hours working, he was up until ridiculous hours brooding over the knee-slappingly hilarious, wacky romp that his life had turned into.

Not.

But he really was starting to feel like the main character - or maybe just the love interest - in a romantic comedy. Somehow it wasn't as much fun to live it as it was to watch it on the big screen.

He dragged himself down the hall towards the office, and gradually a fact penetrated the fog around his brain - there sure was a lot more shouting going on than he had expected. Bracing himself, he rounded the corner, and Karkat instantly sat up, literally shoving Sollux out of his way as he stomped towards John.

"You sent those changes back last night?" he snapped.

"Yeah," John said, eyes widening. "What's going on?"

Instead of answering, Karkat wheeled around to face Sollux. "You see? It's not his fault."

"What's not my fault?" John protested.

"It doethn't matter whothe fault it ith," Sollux lisped irritably. "We're pulling the minitherieth if Yamamoto ithn't here in three hourth, and tho far ath I know, he hathn't even made it to the airport."

"You can't do that! He's got at least five hours before the meeting. What the fuck is your problem, you--" Karkat devolved into a string of harsh clicks and syllables, whatever he was calling Sollux too foul for a human language to encompass.

"Shove it up your athh, kk," Sollux replied, pushing up his glasses. "I need that time to figure out thomething elthe to put in the schedule. Thith ith out of my handth. It doethn't matter how much time you give him, he'th not going to make it."

John took a deep breath. " _What the hell is going on?_ "

Karkat shot him a look. "Some kind of death flu. Keith called this morning at six and said none of his assistants came to work. He's buried in line edits and doesn't have any help for the printing and binding. It's just a lot of work for one person to do by himself, and it's got to be here by two, with bound, completed versions of the script, for the producer's meeting."

John's jaw dropped. "Oh shit."

"That'th what I thaid," Sollux said waspishly. "Look, there'th nothing more that can be done. It'th jutht been one thing after another, and we've already pushed the deadline ath it ith. It'th nobody'th fault. He'll get another therieth nektht theathon."

John looked at his desk, grabbed a briefcase, and started shoving things into it, nearly at random. He grabbed a ream of paper, and another one of cover stock. "Where does Yamamoto live? Can I borrow your car, Karkat? I'll drive there and help him myself!"

"San Francisco," Karkat said wryly.

"Oh." John did a few mental calculations, sagged, then brightened again and sat down at his computer, calling up the airline listings. "The next flight is in an hour. He can be here by eleven."

"But he won't have the _thcript_ ," Sollux growled.

"We can put it together at the airport, then bring it here for the meeting," John insisted, groping for his wallet. "Karkat, Sollux, I have to do this. Yamamoto is my responsibility, and until the very minute it's too late, we have to keep trying."

"Don't pay for it yourself, dumbass." Karkat leaned over him and dropped the company credit card on John's desk. Flashing him a grateful smile, John grabbed it and inputted numbers to purchase a ticket from San Francisco to LAX on the first flight.

"Thith ith ridiculouth. You're jutht wathting time--" Sollux protested, but Karkat punched him in the shoulder, cutting him off. The skinny troll stomped out of the cubicle, rubbing his shoulder, while John grabbed his phone and called Yamamoto to tell him to drop everything, grab his laptop and the edits, and meet him at LAX.

As he shoved a portable printer, a bunch of extra cartridges, more paper, and a ring-binding machine into a larger bag than the one he'd first grabed, he flashed a smile at Karkat, who glared at him sourly.

"Thanks Karkat. I'll be back in a few hours."

Karkat tossed him his car keys, then dropped back into his chair. "Don't fuck this up."

======>

> **Current John: Strife!**

John waited impatiently at the gate until Keith arrived, sweating despite the air conditioning, and his mouth covered by one of those surgical masks. A baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes and his hand trembled a little as he shook John's.

"I'm sorry for all this, Mr. Egbert. Really, you didn't have to go to so much trouble. It was my fault for leaving it until it was so late, but I've been feeling really under the weather and my staff has been out sick for most of the week--"

"Don't be silly!" John exclaimed, dragging him off down the hall. He had waved money at the staff at the airport until they found him a small corner of a private lounge to take over, and thankfully it wasn't far. "I'm your editor, and it's just as much my responsibility as yours. I didn't realize you were sick, too. What a nightmare. But we're going to get this done if it kills me, okay? I'm here until the bitter end."

Keith coughed into his surgical mask. "Thanks... that's really kind of you."

John pushed open the door to the lounge and waved Keith in. "I've got a printer, a binding machine, everything we need. You just work on the editing and I'll handle the printing and binding. Okay?"

"Really, you're a lifesaver," Keith said, falling into a chair and pulling his laptop out of his bag. "I thought I was screwed this time."

"We'll get it done," John said enthusiastically.

"Some of those changes you made last night really made me think," Keith said, leafing through a pile of faxed paper that John recognized as his and Karkat's edits from the night before. "I just don't have time to spend on rewriting, but this here, where you said--" He showed John a section of the script that Karkat had torn apart and put together while John merely watched in awe. "I thought there was something off about the pacing here, and you really nailed it. Thank you. I think I can fix it without much trouble, too."

John smiled awkwardly. "Oh, uh. Thanks. Hey, it was nothing. Whatever makes the end product as good as it can be is best for all of us, right?"

Keith smiled at him - at least, he assumed he did, from the crinkling around his eyes. "That's right. You really are a good editor, Mr. Egbert. I'm glad that they assigned me to you. I won't let you down, again."

John beamed, feeling his cheeks heating up. "I'm still learning," he said modestly. "Let's get this done. And things will definitely be better the next time."

As they both bent their heads over their work, John sighed inwardly. Would he ever be as good as Karkat? He was sure that Karkat had to be pissed as hell at him right now, for letting this situation get so out of control. Maybe he was regretting assigning John a writer of his own so soon, and had concluded that John wasn't ready yet, after all.

He could only hope that he could make it up to Karkat later. Somehow.

But for now, his writer needed him, and he didn't have time to worry about how this incident would reflect on his own record. He had to do his best to protect Yamamoto's career, and that would hopefully help him save his own.

When they were done, he packed up all of the equipment, while Keith lovingly placed his laptop and the twenty bound versions of the script in his own bag. John drove Karkat's car back to the office and sent Keith on his way to wait for the producer's meeting while he headed up to his own floor to tell Karkat the good news.

They had gotten there with less than an hour to spare. But they _had_ gotten there, and he was feeling pretty proud. Not Zillyhoo proud - but close.

Once again, though, there was shouting going on when he got back to the cubicle.

"He'th not here? Have you heard from him at all?"

"No! I haven't wanted to bother him while he was busy getting work done, but--"

John charged around the corner, forcing a bright smile to his face. It was hard - every time Sollux was in their cubicle, it seemed to mean a fight, but he was determined. "I'm back!"

"Thank gog," Karkat snarled. "How'd it go?"

John rummaged in his bag and pulled out a spare copy of the manuscript, shoving it into Karkat's hands. "We're done. Keith is downstairs and the meeting's about to start. Everything went fine." Smile smile smile.

Then he let the smile fade. He glanced from Karkat to Sollux and let his shoulders slump. "I'm really sorry, both of you. I let things get out of hand, and I didn't watch over my author properly. This is all my fault, and I hope you can forgive me."

Sollux grunted. "It got done. That'th the important thing." With a shrug, he turned to leave.

"Hey Sollux," Karkat called after him, smirking. "Next time you want a status update, you _can_ just phone, you know? You know what those funny boxes on all the desks are, right?"

"Thuck my bulge," Sollux said nonchalantly over his shoulder, and then he was gone.

That was it? Everything was fine now? John blinked after him, confused, then turned to Karkat. "Why was he hanging around, anyway? Doesn't he have other things to do?"

Karkat shrugged. "He's involved in scheduling. This sort of thing is Sollux' job, too, John. It's important to him that things get done on timeline, or it throws his own shit all out of whack. He shows up because he cares."

"About the schedule," John finished, nodding, but Karkat gave him a look.

"He cares about _us_."

John mentally edited that 'us' to 'Karkat' but nodded thoughtfully. He doubted that Sollux cared about John at all, but he probably _did_ care that he did his job correctly. Especially as it related to Karkat's reputation.

"I'm really sorry for making him worry, then," he said sheepishly. "And you, too! Like I said, before. I won't let this happen again, Karkat."

" _Don't_ let it happen again," Karkat said, getting to his feet and stretching. "But I wasn't worried. I knew you'd get it done in time."

John's eyes widened. Even _he_ had doubted it at times, especially when they hit that traffic on the highway. "You did?"

"Sure," Karkat said. He stepped past John, ruffling his hair affectionately as he passed. "When you say you're going to do something, you fucking get it done. This is nothing compared to what we've been through together, before. Want a coffee?"

John couldn't answer. He was too busy being speechless and trying to control the pace of his heart as Karkat walked away. His scalp tingled where Karkat's fingers had touched him, and he tried to understand why those few words of trust and encouragement meant so much to him.

 _Damnit, why did he do that?_ he thought, and quickly left the cubicle before Karkat could return with coffee. He was pretty sure the troll would do something cute like make it exactly the way he liked it, and it would just be too much for him right now.

He darted into the bathroom and set his glasses aside, then splashed some water on his face. The cool water felt good on his heated face, and he bent low to do it again, hearing the door open and close.

He paused, but no one addressed him, and he groped blindly for a paper towel from the dispenser to his right. One was pressed into his hand and he lifted up, wiping his face with the towel and then slipping his glasses back on.

"Hey thanks," he said, turning around--

\--and coming face to face with Sollux.

Sollux had shot up since they were kids, and while he was skinny as a rail, he had half a head on John. The troll leaned forward into him, pressing both hands to the counter on either side of John and forcing him to lean back awkwardly.

John could feel water soaking into the back of his polo shirt.

"Uh. Do you. Need something?" John managed. Fuck, those plastic eyes were creepy, and Sollux had so many _teeth_. He sort of wished he still had his windy thing. After all _Sollux_ had _his_ powers. It wasn't really fair.

"Yeah, I've got a couple of quethtionth for you. You got a minute?"

"Sure!" John said, pasting a friendly smile on his face and trying to sidle out from in front of Sollux. "What's up?"

"Did you apply here becauthe of Karkat?" Sollux asked, shifting his body to keep John caged against the bathroom counter.

"Huh?" John stared up at him in confusion. "No! I had no idea he was working here. And what if I did, anyway? Is there something wrong with that?"

Sollux sneered at him. "Lithten, monkey. I'm not trying to be an athhhole here, but--"

"But you really are being one!"

"I thaid lithten!" Sollux snarled, baring his teeth again. "Karkat ith my betht friend and one of the motht important peope to me in thith entire univerthe, and any other one. He wath really fucked up after you dumped him all thothe yearth ago, and I am not going to thtand by while you fuck him up again. Do you underthtand me?"

"I'm not trying to fuck him up!" John wailed. He ducked quickly, and finally got past Sollux, but wound up backing into one of the hand dryers instead.

"You doing a really fucking good job of it, anyway," Sollux growled. He pointed a clawed finger at him. "All I'm thaying ith, thith had better thtay a professional relationship on your end. Ath far ath I'm conthrned, the day thith whole 'love' thing ith abandoned between you will be a better day for everyone."

Without another word, Sollux turned and banged out of the bathroom, leaving John standing open-mouthed and furious.

"What the hell? Tell that to Karkat!" he exclaimed helplessly to the empty room.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap, I finally got back to this. Thank you to all my readers for your patience!

> **Current John: Fall asleep**

Despite the Bipolar Troll Bathroom Incident, as John decided to mentally dub it, John was feeling pretty good as he left work that evening. Karkat was in a good mood and only yelled at a couple of John's coworkers over things that they actually messed up. He didn't even yell at John once. Besides that, John felt like he'd pushed through and won some kind of challenge, almost like moving up a rank on his echeladder.

He wasn't exactly a god tier editor like Karkat, but he was sure that for his efforts and with everything he'd learned so far he had reached at least Nipper Cadet. Maybe even Bravesprout!

One day, perhaps he'd even reach the vaunted level of Boy Skylark and be able to at least look Karkat in the face after completing his own editing pass.

Even better, the train wasn't that crowded today, and he actually got a seat, with an empty one beside him.

Though he felt buoyed up by his success that day, the lack of sleep was catching up to him. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the window, feeling a heaviness pass over him instantly.

 _Shit,_ he thought, struggling to open his eyes as the train began to move. The last thing he wanted to do was fall asleep and miss his stop. He rubbed his eyes vigorously, trying to wake himself up. Soon he'd get home, and then he could sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep, all the way to morning. He just had to hang on.

Someone dropped into the seat next to him, and he wasn't entirely surprised when he glanced over and saw that it was Karkat.

"Today I know you brought your car to work," John said accusingly. "I drove it to the airport!"

"Go stick it up your ass," Karkat drawled without a hint of guilt, leaning back in his seat. John didn't think he'd ever seen Karkat quite so comfortable-looking, even complacent.

"Maybe I will," John replied, slumping back again and smothering a yawn. "But I don't think my ass is big enough for a whole car, so maybe you'll just have to take it for me!"

"Maybe I'll stick something else up your ass instead," Karkat grinned. Then he sobered. "But before that... you did really well today, John."

Startled by the compliment, John forgot to be uncomfortable about Karkat's flirting, and blushed. "Thanks. I just, it's really nothing major. I didn't want to let you down."

"And you didn't," Karkat replied, looking away. John thought he saw a crimson glow under that dusky grey skin, too, and felt a bit better about his own blush, though it really wasn't fair how dark troll skin was.

John drew in a breath and let it out. He wished that every conversation wasn't in some way awkward, simply because he knew Karkat was...something for him, and John was...something back. Or something. Why couldn't they just hang around like bros and be normal like they used to be?

Maybe they could be. If he just tried hard enough.

"Well, I'm really glad. And I learned a lot from this experience," John said earnestly, leaning his head back against the window once more and gazing up at the advertisements near the ceiling. There was a poster for a movie Karkat had worked on up there and it made him smile to see. One day, a title he recognized from his own editing work would be in that spot.

"I understand now that I need to be more connected with what my author is going through, and that I can't just assume things will work out all right. If I'd realized earlier on that Keith was having problems with his staff being sick and that he was coming down with a cold, then I could have helped him earlier, and it wouldn't have come down to the wire. So next time, I'll ask questions and listen more, and if my author is struggling, I'll find out why so I can support him in the right way."

Karkat turned to look at him again, a faint smile playing about his lips, though the rest of his face was scowling. "You don't need to give me a big fucking speech, dumbass. I know you learned from this, and I'm glad to hear it. Just don't turn into a fucking babysitter, either. It's important to get the work done, but if your author can't ask for help like an adult, and get his work done on deadline, there's only so much you can do to make up for his failings. Yamamoto should have _told_ you earlier, too. Don't put it all on your shoulders. Ultimately, if he's going to make promises he can't deliver, and not ask for help, he's dead fucking weight and should be dropped."

John nodded slowly. "I understand. I don't think we should make that decision too quickly, though."

"Me neither," Karkat said. His face relaxed and he patted John on the shoulder. "It's all a balance. You've got to think about the big picture. Not just one author, or one show, or one particular script. But each script is also important, because dropping something from the roster is a huge business decision that shouldn't be made lightly and isn't really in our hands, anyway."

John felt like he should be taking notes, but not only did he have no note paper, he felt like he needed toothpicks to keep his eyes open. He nodded and tilted his head sideways, letting it rest on Karkat's shoulder. It was so nice to just be sitting here, talking about normal things.

Karkat put his arm around John and gentle, clawed fingers brushed through his hair. John sighed and closed his eyes, ignoring the little voice poking at him. He was so tired.

"I'm thinking about giving you a show of your own to handle," Karkat said abruptly.

John rubbed his eyes and yawned. His jaw cracked. He had a feeling that this was big news, but it was hard to concentrate. "Really?"

"Yeah," Karkat said, sounding bemused. "It's a big deal, you know. You'd have several writers to coordinate, an ongoing schedule to maintain."

"Sounds awesome," John yawned. "I'll do it if you think I can."

"You can pretty much fucking do anything you put your mind to. That's the thing about you," Karkat growled. John felt like he heard it from a long way off.

John woke to the feeling of a scratchy blanket resting on top of him and a rough cushion underneath him. Nevertheless, he was horizontal and warm, so he was in no hurry to open his eyes.

Slowly, though, the oddness of the sensation penetrated his fogged brain. He couldn't smell oil and B.O. and he wasn't sitting up and uncomfortable, so he couldn't be on the train. But he didn't remember ever getting _off_ the train. He couldn't imagine having sleepwalked home without a single memory of the trip, no matter how tired he was, so he reluctantly opened his eyes and lifted his head to look around.

He immediately recognized his surroundings as Karkat's apartment. Karkat was nowhere in sight, but he could see his own clothing folded neatly and sitting on the coffee table just a foot away.

That sight made him consider his own situation, and suddenly he was wide awake and giving a yell that almost rattled the walls.

"What the fuck!"

An instant later Karkat catapulted himself from the bedroom. He was naked, too, and coated with a liberal quantity of green slime. He blinked in a befuddled, half-awake manner, his sickles in his hands and looking around for danger. "What's wrong!?"

"Why am I naked?" John exclaimed, and dove deeper beneath the blanket, covering even his head. "Why are you naked?!"

There was a short pause, then Karkat began to laugh. "We were sleeping, moron. Why, did you think I'd felt you up in your sleep?"

"That's not funny!" John exclaimed from inside his blanket fort.

Karkat snorted softly. "You _wish_ I'd done it, that's the truth. You know, if you'd just admit that you like me, then I could do it without all of these ridiculous histrionics and we'd both be happier."

John snarled and wadded up the blanket, then threw it straight at Karkat's smirking face. "You're such an asshole! How many times do I have to say no before you believe me?"

He pulled on his pants while Karkat fought his way out of the blanket, then John grabbed the rest of his clothing and gathered it towards his chest in a messy bundle.

"Leave me alone! This is sexual harassment! Look it up!" And without pausing to see Karkat's face, John stomped angrily out of the apartment.

======>

> **Past John: Examine Karkat's respite block**

 _It's so strange. Falling in love._

John reached for a book on an upper shelf of the school library and felt clawed fingers brush his arm. "Oh!" he said, jerking his hand back, and Karkat rolled his eyes.

"If you can get your thinkpan out of the clouds for ten seconds, could you do me a favour and get that book for me, fuckass? I can't fucking reach it, and I need it for that mind bogglingly stupid assignment due tomorrow." He pointed at the book three places over from the one John was going after, and glared up at the taller human until John grabbed the book and handed it to him.

Karkat kept assuring everyone that he was going to get his adult growth soon and be taller than everyone else, but so far his body had failed to come through.

"Here you go, Karkat," John said brightly.

 _But can I really be in love? He's a boy! Only he's a troll and I don't know if that really counts. But still, he's a boy troll._

"There are step-stools if you need them, you know!"

The resulting torrent of profanity was unprintable.

 _It's like you just have this weird jug of water. Only the water is feelings. And every time you see him, a little bit of feelings water is added to the jug._

"I love you, Karkat."

 _And then, all of a sudden, the jug just overflows and you say something really, really stupid._

"What did you say?" Karkat stared at John for a few moments while John looked everywhere but at his best troll friend.

John nearly dropped his book as he flailed, trying desperately to find a way out of this. "No, I mean, do you want to go out with me?"

That was not what he'd meant to say. Or maybe it had been. He was stuck staring at the floor as Karkat considered him a bit longer.

"Yeah, sure." Karkat turned away. "Let me get this bulge sucking assignment done and then we'll go."

Though John tried to act casual as they walked together on their way to Karkat's hive, he could hear that his own voice was a little too high to be normal. He struggled to wish away his nervousness, telling himself that he had been friends with Karkat for _ages_ , and had no reason to be nervous about going to his hive, even though he had never been there before.

Even if this was technically, sort of, a date.

Karkat, like most young trolls on this remade Earth, had built himself a troll-style hive with a lawn ring. It was a modest house, and a crab lusus greeted them at the door, sniffing over John while Karkat stood ready to strife if the crab took a dislike to him.

However, after a bit of poking, the crab stalked off with a rumbling growl, and Karkat led John further into the hive, up a set of stairs to his respite block.

"I'll get us some drinks. Be right back," Karkat muttered, and suddenly John found himself alone in Karkat's bedroom.

It was much as he had pictured it. A recuperacoon hulked in one corner, and Karkat's crabtop stood on its legs on the desk. It actually reminded John a lot of his own room, but that was probably just a coincidence.

John leaned against the recuperacoon. _Man,_ he thought, tapping his foot agitatedly against the floor. _After all these years, I'm finally in Karkat's room. This is a prime opportunity for a prank._

But he couldn't think of one just now. Besides, he didn't really want to ruin the mood. This wasn't bros hanging out, like him and Dave. This was...something else.

Alive with excitement, he leaned over and looked at the sopor, then impulsively reached in and touched it with his fingers. He'd never actually seen sopor before, though he'd heard enough about it from his troll friends. It adhered a little, and made his fingers feel tingly. He wiped it off on his shirt and moved to snoop.

There was one thing he'd always been curious about, and now he had the perfect opportunity to find out.

Where did Karkat keep his pail?

He tried to peer under the recuperacoon, but there wasn't really room there. Then he opened up drawers and snooped under Karkat's desk. But there really was just one place that he could think of where a pail might reasonably be kept, and he approached it with trepidation.

The closet.

The hangers were full of identical black shirts and grey pants, with a couple of pairs of black tennis shoes lined up on the floor.

There was a bunch of other crap, and John poked about before leaning in more deeply to look into the corners.

And there, sitting innocently in one back corner of the closet was a grey plastic pail. And it did not contain any cleaning products. In fact, it didn't contain anything at all, despite being the sort of object that would work well as a storage receptacle.

"Oh my god," John said, blushing to the tips of his ears. He backed up and quickly closed the closet door, then collapsed to the floor in a fit of giggles. "It's really true! Trolls really do use buckets!"

"What are you laughing about, fuckass?" Karkat asked as he opened the door. He looked around cautiously, then sidled inside with two cans of soda clutched in his hand. He looked suspiciously at John, then took another look up and all around.

"Nothing," John said quickly. "Really, it's nothing. And you don't have to look like that! I didn't set a prank or anything like that."

"Oh no, that's not suspicious at all," Karkat growled, then tossed him one of the cans of soda. "You want to watch a movie? Or would you prefer to roll around on the floor all night like a grub?"

John blushed again and opened the can. "A movie sounds great, Karkat. That's a good idea."

"Good." Karkat grabbed his husktop and placed it on the floor, raising the legs to their full height, and the two boys sat side-by-side, leaning against the recuperacoon, their shoulders brushing together as Karkat queued up a movie.

It was a decent movie, despite being one of Karkat's staple romcoms. John found himself laughing at several points, and even tearing up a little at the end. The two boys sat next to each other, not even touching, until the credits started to roll.

Then Karkat looked at him. "Why do you say you're in love with me? You never said anything like that before. Hell, you told me once that you weren't a homosexual - isn't that still a thing?"

John blushed. "I know, but... I don't know, Karkat. I'm not sure how I feel about you being a boy, but I know how I feel. I love being around you, and uh, you're one of my best friends. I think about you all the time, and I want to make you happy, and being around you just gives me this feeling. I've just come to realize that really, I _do_ love you, very much."

Karkat snorted softly and leaned forward a bit. "That is the most lame confession I have ever heard in my life."

"Well, excuse me Mr. Romantic Guru. Not everyone can be perfectly eloquent like in a movie--"

John choked on his words as Karkat pressed his lips to John's. The troll gave a soft warble, and John shivered at the sound, but a moment later John pushed on his shoulders and the kiss broke abruptly.

"N-Not so fast! I...I've never even really kissed anyone other than Rose that one time and it didn't count because she was dead!" he babbled.

Karkat snorted. "Why were you looking for my pail if you didn't know how this was going to turn out?" The troll gave him a push, and John found himself on the floor, with Karkat stretched out over him.

Karkat kissed him, and this time John let himself relax, let himself enjoy the movement of their lips together and apart. After a few seconds, it was easy to forget that Karkat was a boy, or that he was a troll, or that John had really never done this before. He'd forgotten everything but the taste of Karkat, and the way their tongues slid together inside John's mouth.

The one tiny blot on this whole thing was the fact that, all evening, Karkat had never once indicated to John that he shared his feelings. He had accepted John's love, but hadn't said if he loved him back.

"John..." Karkat moaned softly, the sweetest sound he had ever heard the troll make.

In that moment, though he still wondered about Karkat's feelings, John knew that he would happily listen for that sound, for the rest of his life.

======>

> **Current John: Wake up**

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE EGBERT, ARE YOU AWAKE OVER THERE?!"

John jerked and opened his eyes, nearly falling backwards on his chair as the shout rang off of the cubicle walls.

He set his chair legs down and rubbed his eyes. They burned and his head throbbed. "Sorry, Karkat, I think I fell asleep."

All around him, his other coworkers were stretched out in various attitudes of near-somnolent industriousness. In other words, while their heads were often resting on the desks, their hands were still moving and their eyes - glazed as they might be - were open.

Tonight was the last night before a major production went to camera, and the entire department had been pulling all nighters for the last three days, preparing. They were all reaching critical mass as far as sleepiness, but it was almost over.

Yet as usual, Karkat seemed as alert as ever. Just crabbier.

"No shit," Karkat growled, stomping over to him with an armful of scripts. "You look like hell, Egbert. Are you usually that colour?"

"I don't feel so good," John groaned, rubbing his temples. "I think I'm sick."

"Sleep when you're dead," Karkat snarled, shoving the scripts into John's arms. "And you're not allowed to die without my permission."

"Sorry, Karkat."

"You'd better be sorry. Get those scripts copied and make sure that they're all complete. I want every page double-checked to make sure we got all the changes in properly and nothing was missed."

"Okay." John levered himself to his feet, staggering under the weight of the paper.

"Looked like you were having a pretty nice dream," Karkat added, in a quieter tone. John glanced at him questioningly, feeling a blush begin to warm his cheeks. "You were smiling," Karkat added, smirking. "Were you dreaming about me?"

"No!" John lied, the blush deepening. He turned angrily and fled the cubicle to the sound of Karkat's disbelieving snort.


	8. Chapter 8

> **Past John: Examine reading material**

Karkat was so cute when he was asleep.

This was not an observation that John had ever had an opportunity to make before. He'd certainly never been in Karkat's _bedroom_ \- not ever, though they'd known each other for years - and even if he had had the chance to finally see how Karkat lived, John doubted the prickly, insomniac troll would go ahead and sleep for his observational (and pranking) opportunities.

So it rather stunned John when he came around a corner at the library and saw the troll with his head down on the desk, a book hanging loosely from his fingers, and his lips slightly parted as he breathed. Karkat was still frowning as he slept, but only a little, as if his face really was stuck that way. Otherwise, there was a relaxed slackness to his expression that made him look younger and slightly vulnerable.

John had to cover his mouth to stifle a giggle, and then blushed to the tips of his ears as a few ideas of interesting ways he could wake Karkat wormed into his mind of their own volition.

No way. Karkat would definitely bite his lips off.

Still, he couldn't help himself from stepping closer, very cautiously. He didn't know how good troll instincts were but he suspected they were _very_ good, and he didn't want to startle Karkat. He'd heard that trolls were weird about sleeping, and needed sopor or they'd have nightmares, but Karkat didn't seem to be having a bad dream right now.

 _Is it stalkerish to watch him sleep?_ he wondered.

As he circled the desk, the title of the book Karkat was holding remained frustratingly difficult to see. It was flopped open, the title page pointed almost straight down.

Leaning way over, John tried to see what was on the page, and nearly choked when he realized he was reading a steamy sex scene. It was definitely a Harlequin - their new troll romance line, it looked like.

At the sound, Karkat stirred, and John fled before his eyes could open, covering his blushing face with one hand and unable to stifle his giggles.

======>

> **Current John: Wake up again**

John opened his eyes and rolled over, groaning, to punch his alarm clock. _I can't believe I keep dreaming about high school,_ he thought as he dragged himself from his bed.

"When is this going to end?" he moaned.

======>

> **Current John: Make a proposal**

"But you didn't even _read_ it!" John protested as Karkat shoved his proposal back into his hands with a disgusted snort.

"It's shit," Karkat growled. "I don't need to look any further to figure that out. Do it again."

He had worked for the last week on a detailed proposal for a new television show, based on the script for the pilot, which Karkat had given him. Now that the author had been accepted by the editing team - namely, Karkat - it was John's job to pitch it to the marketing department. If all went well, and he was persuasive, the show would be picked up and resources given to the writer, and actors would be hired and the whole television-making machine would slowly begin grinding forward.

"Come on, you're just being an asshole!"

Karkat looked up at him, red eyes flashing dangerously. "This proposal is a piece of fucking trash and you should be ashamed of yourself for having wasted resources to print it off. There's no marketing statistics backing it up. Did you even research at all for this? What audience is this show to be marketed to, and what other shows will be in competition for it, and what are their ratings like? What kind of revenue could we expect to see from a show of this kind? Do you think that all editors do is collect scripts?"

The troll gave John a shove in the middle of his chest, forcing John back a step. "Do you even want this show? This is _pathetic_. Now do it again, or don't waste my fucking time by telling me you want to go somewhere in this industry."

John felt every cell of his face turning red under the verbal barrage. "If I needed all of that in there, why didn't you tell me? You haven't told me what to do, and I've never done anything like this before at all!"

Karkat snarled, low in the back of his throat. "What am I, your lusus? You never _asked_ me for help. Now fuck off and let me get some work done."

Chastened, John slouched back to his desk and glared at his computer, tossing the proposal into his waste paper basket and pulling up the electronic file. With a soft groan, he began trying to figure out where the market research statistics were kept on the network drive.

He'd never had to consider marketing research, before. When he worked for Dave he just edited the comic. The closest he'd gotten to worrying about marketing was to talk to advertisers who wanted to put banners on Dave's site. He and Dave hadn't worried too much about whether people would _like_ the comic - they just did it, and somehow people liked it.

He really had no idea what he was doing. But after that public humiliation, no way was he going to ask Karkat for help. He'd probably just get yelled at again.

He'd just have to figure out how to do it himself.

Several hours later, John felt like beating his head on the desk would have been more productive than spending the last six hours staring at this document. He had found the marketing statistics, and then spent a lot of time staring at them as if if he stared at them long enough they would become sentient and explain themselves to him.

Googling hadn't helped.

Playing solitaire for an hour had _really_ not helped.

He'd started slotting graphs into his proposal, then moved them around into prettier configurations, then deleted them when he realized he really didn't know if the graphs he'd chosen had anything to do with his proposal or not.

He was distantly aware that his coworkers had all headed home already. Even Karkat was tidying up his desk for the night, and John tried to ignore him. He had a sinking feeling that even if he worked on this stupid project all night, he'd still be no further ahead, but he didn't know what to do. He _really_ wanted Karkat to take back what he'd said earlier. He wanted the show, so badly! He wanted Karkat to feel that he'd made the right choice in giving John this opportunity.

"How's it going?"

John jumped as Karkat's voice sounded right behind his shoulder.

"It's great," he said, shifting to try to cover the screen so that Karkat couldn't see it. "Yeah, I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now. Go on home, and it'll be on your desk when you come in tomorrow! Ha ha!"

Oops, that fake laugh had probably not helped. John felt his ears turning red again.

"Uh huh, that's great," Karkat said, not sounding as though he believed a word. "If it's so close to finishing, why don't you show me now?"

"Why don't you just let me finish it myself?" John snapped. Karkat reached for the mouse, and John quickly tried to shove him away. "Hey, stop it!"

Karkat yelped as his hand was deflected right into John's paper cup of coffee and the cup fell off the desk. John dove to catch it before it could fall on the floor and spatter them both with hot liquid. Unfortunately, as warm hands enclosed John's, he realized that Karkat had just done the same thing.

As they both held the coffee with both hands, Karkat's claws pricking a little into the back of John's wrists, John looked up.

His heart made a huge _thump_ in his chest.

From the look on Karkat's face - a sort of soft, startled expression that looked almost foreign on the troll's features - Karkat felt it, too.

A moment later, Karkat slid his hands off of John's and straightened up, clearing his throat and looking away. John could see a crimson flush spread across his face that likely matched the one on his own. "Well, are you going to let me help you, or are you going to sit there being a stupid wiggler all night and still have a shitty proposal in the morning?" Karkat growled.

 _Oh my god, I can't believe something so cliché just happened,_ John thought, setting his coffee down carefully and pushing it away from the edge of the desk.

"Why are you offering to help me? You told me to fuck off, earlier," he asked, though his anger was more muted than before.

Karkat reached out and grabbed a chair, wheeling it over. "So what? I tell you to fuck off five times a day. You've suffered through this on your own long enough, and it's obvious you need a hand, so let me help you. That's what I'm here for, after all. That and for you to worship as your god, of course, but that's pretty much a given."

"Yeah, whatever," John said, smiling a bit as he scooted over. He sobered as Karkat leaned in to read. "I'm sorry," he added, a bit more subdued. "I should have asked you what to do in the first place, I guess."

"Yes, you should have," Karkat grunted. "But if you weren't a stubborn bulgemuncher, I probably wouldn't have any respect for you. Don't worry about it, Egbert, but _do_ learn from your mistakes, okay? I'm not here to hold your hand, but I have no use for people who don't know when to ask for help, either."

"I think I understand," John said quietly, smiling.

Karkat pulled up a few documents from the network drive, and began to explain what the various numbers meant, the metrics that they used, and how to figure out which metrics might relate to John's specific show. John scrambled for a notebook and began scribbling furiously. As always when Karkat began to explain something about the business of editing, he was stunned by how knowledgeable he was, and how much more John had to learn.

"Wow, you can really tell all that from the Neilsen ratings?" John asked eagerly, when Karkat paused for breath. "And these projections, do you have a computer do them?"

"Computers do the calculations, but hell, why do you think you had to take statistics in college, nooksniffer?" Karkat replied, rolling his eyes. "This is just one tiny part of what you can do with the kind of data that we gather."

"I didn't take statistics!" John said, reddening.

"Well, you _should_ , it's fucking useful," Karkat said, punching John lightly on the shoulder. "Take a night class."

"When?" John replied, laughing. His earlier anger was all but forgotten. It was fun to be here in the all-but-silent office, working on a project with Karkat. "I'm too busy working all the time."

"Not my problem," Karkat murmured, and leaned in close. "Fuck, you're so adorable."

And Karkat kissed him.

John yelped. The friendly teasing had taken an abrupt - if somewhat predictable - left turn, and he punched Karkat hard in the shoulder. Karkat straightened with a grunt and rubbed the spot while John scooted his chair away a few inches.

"Don't do that out of the blue like that, Karkat!"

A throat-clearing sound made them both look around. Sollux stood in the doorway, staring at them both with his unreadable robotic eyes. John had to resist the urge to dive under the table. Had Sollux seen the kiss? Was he going to kick his ass, now? There was a certain glittery quality around his horns, and John wondered if that was because he was holding his powers back, or something.

Karkat grunted and got to his feet, looking far more calm in the face of Sollux' glower than John felt. "Don't you ever knock, you irrepressible pervert? What's up?"

"Karkat--" John squeaked in horror. Way to draw attention to what they were doing!

"Mark in Thaleth needth to thee you, kk," Sollux said, his voice flat. "If you've got a thecond."

"Telephones are _still_ a thing, you know," Karkat said, rolling his eyes. He glanced at John. "You okay if we finish this up tomorrow?"

John nodded quickly and reached for the mouse to save the document. He suddenly couldn't wait to get out of the building and go home. The tension was so thick it was like a fog filling the room. "Yeah, yeah, there's no big rush. I can finish this off tomorrow. Thanks, Karkat!"

Karkat nodded and headed for the door. As he drew even with Sollux, the yellow-blood lashed out with a few syllables in Alternian, quick and peppered with angry clicks. Karkat replied in kind, far more calmly, and the two trolls left, still chattering in their alien language. It really wasn't fair, that they were fluent in English, but it was almost impossible for a human to learn their language.

Then again, he was pretty sure he knew what they were arguing about.

Glumly, he waited until the sounds of their discussion disappeared with the closing of the elevator door, then he cleaned up his desk. He shut down his computer, threw out the rest of his coffee, and absconded.

He was in such a hurry to leave that he didn't even see Sollux standing in the lobby downstairs until he had nearly passed him. A curl of some kind of invisible force wrapped itself around his waist and tugged him backwards. John yelled in surprise, his shoes skidding on the linoleum, and nearly fell over when the force abruptly disappeared again.

Sollux was sitting on one of the sofas, and John whirled to face him. "What are you doing!?"

"Hang on a minute, athhhole," Sollux growled, getting to his feet. "I'm getting thick and tired of having the thame damn converthation with you every two dayth. When are you going to get it through your thinkpan? What ith it going to take for you to thtay away from him, like I keep telling you to do? Karkat ith my reth--"

"There's nothing between us!" John protested at the top of his lungs. "He's not my boyfriend, okay? He's just my boss, and maybe my friend, and all of this is just a big misunderstanding, or a prank, or _something_ , but I swear, I'm trying to do what you're telling me to do!"

"You are a fucking liar," Sollux snarled, baring a double mouthful of snaggle teeth. He turned to stalk away. "It'th not that hard, Egbert. If you wanted to thtop thith, you would. Thtop with the flirting and the thloppy makeoutth, and there you go!"

John froze. Sure, Karkat did keep kissing him, but _was_ he doing things to provoke him? Karkat acted like John was running hot and cold, that he was giving mixed signals, and he couldn't really say that he hadn't been. When Karkat kissed him, he usually returned it. When Karkat had jerked him off on his floor a week before - something he was unable to think about without blushing and feeling blood start to pool in his groin - he hadn't exactly fought him off. To a troll, that was probably as good as enthusiastic consent.

Sure, he'd been telling Karkat he wasn't interested, and Karkat wasn't listening, but was Sollux right, too? Maybe it was a troll thing. Maybe he was contributing to this, without really meaning to. Maybe there was a reason Karkat didn't believe him when he said he didn't want to date him.

Probably because no matter how many times he said it, he knew deep down inside that it wasn't true.

"But Sollux, isn't Karkat with _you_?" he said finally, raising his head. "I don't know what to do!"

His heartfelt words were met with silence. Sollux was already gone, and the door had swung shut behind him before he had even spoken.

John cursed and raced for the doors, banging outside in time to see Sollux peel out of the driveway in his car. Snow was falling lazily out of a black sky, slowly covering Karkat's car with a thin patina of white speckles. It was one of the few vehicles left in the parking lot, and John only then realized that he and Karkat had worked for hours, long past the time when nearly everyone would have gone home. The other cars scattered around had to belong to members of the sales team that Karkat was meeting with.

He sighed and trudged to the train station, with no urge to wait for Karkat and try to talk to him about what had just happened. Clearly what he needed to do was talk to _Sollux_ , really get honest with him, and get his help. Maybe if they cleared the air, he could figure out how to convince Karkat to back off for real. Or...whatever.

He didn't know what he wanted, anymore. But if Karkat and Sollux were dating, he knew he couldn't interfere with that.

He needed to get to the bottom of this, once and for all, and the first step was to have a really serious, calm conversation with Sollux that didn't involve any threats.


	9. Chapter 9

> **Current John: Consult with your best friend**

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] \--

EB: dave  
EB: dave  
EB: daaaave!  
EB: this is your conscience speaking, daaaaaaaave!   
TG: woah  
TG: i have this weird feeling that someone is trying to summon me from beyond the grave  
TG: like this weird shiver in my nether regions  
TG: an intimate ghostly dick prodding me right in the prostate  
TG: i said no man   
TG: how could you do this to me?   
EB: ewwwwwwww!  
EB: ok seriously, how many times do i have to tell you that i'm not gay?  
EB: not that there's anything wrong with it  
EB: only maybe i am  
EB: i don't know  
EB: but that's a topic for later, really, uh, so how are you, dave?  
EB: how's the job going?   
TG: its fucking amazing  
TG: a neverending masturbation fest with fountains of come erupting forth from our engorged egos each and every day  
TG: actually it's really pretty awesome  
TG: im making a decent amount of coin doing sbahj comics and for some reason no one has fired me yet  
TG: but who the fuck cares when my best friend is in need  
TG: lay it on me bro  
TG: whose man stick are you lusting after tonight   
EB: oh no  
EB: i should have pestered rose!  
EB: haha just kidding oh god no, i couldn't handle her on this issue   
TG: okay seriously john  
TG: whats up    
EB: okay  
EB: okay  
EB: so, remember karkat?    
TG: no  
TG: oh hang on wait  
TG: wait  
TG: im getting something  
TG: wasnt he some douchebag who disappeared after highschool and never talked to us again?  
TG: after you know we went and saved the world and all that bullshit with him  
TG: i have this vague memory i dont know man   
EB: hahaha...  
EB: so  
EB: he's my boss   
TG: what  
TG: seriously what  
TG: youve had this job for how long    
EB: three months or so....?    
TG: and only now you tell me that karkat is your boss  
TG: what gives    
EB: i don't know...  
EB: it's just been really weird and i guess the few times we talked over the last couple of months i haven't wanted to harsh your squee, you know?    
TG: harsh my squee  
TG: did you just use a weaboo term to describe my unadulterated glee over making it bigtime in the comic book indus--  
TG: no wait i just decided it was completely appropriate  
TG: go on    
EB: um  
EB: well, basically he keeps hitting on me  
EB: and i don't know if he's really serious or not????  
EB: and because he's my boss, that's particularly awkward  
EB: not to mention the fact that sollux keeps showing up and warning me not to go anywhere near him, and i think maybe sollux likes karkat, but i'm not sure  
EB: and anyway, it is not like i have a choice about being around karkat, since he's my boss and all!  
EB: not to mention the fact that he is the one pursuing me, and not the other way around!  
EB: but sollux doesn't seem to accept that, and it's just all a huge mess  
EB: help me, dave, please?   
TG: what the actual fuck

======>

> **Current John: Get bugged**

The conversation John had had with Dave the night before still wobbled around inside his head when he got to work the following morning. It had been pretty late when he began pestering Dave in the first place, but Dave usually kept hours better suited to trolls than to humans, and John hadn't been able to sleep.

The whole thing was just reaching critical stupidity levels, and he needed to do something about it before it blew up in his face worse than The Tumour had.

He was determined to put Dave's plan into effect before he left today, but he'd have to wait until lunchtime or so. Sollux worked wonky hours, coming in late and leaving even later, probably at least partially because he was a troll. Why that didn't seem to apply to Karkat probably had more to do with his workaholic and insomniac tendencies than because trolls were _ever_ early risers.

He ran the words over in his mind, fixing them with his determination.

TG: just tell him man  
TG: lay it on him like a burial shroud on a rotting corpse  
TG: captor might be a nerdy bipolar twink but hell probably listen if you catch him when hes not already pissed at you  
TG: and karkat might be a douche but i cant see him fucking with you like this for three months  
TG: no one has that kind of attention span not even me  
TG: maybe he really is in love with you who knows weirder things have happened

Words of gold, man. Words of gold.

He could do this.

"Morning, Egbert."

John nearly jumped out of his skin at the familiar voice, which was one he hadn't heard while in an elevator in about two months. He looked around, feeling his cheeks try to flush and go pale at the same time, which was almost painful. "Hi Karkat!"

Nervously, he turned to watch the number display above the doors, willing them to go faster.

"That's it?" Karkat said suddenly. John could feel the grumpy glare on the back of his head and his shoulders tightened a bit. "Just a 'hi'? You've been leaping out of every elevator I've stepped into for two months. What do you think I'm going to do?"

"Nothing!" John squeaked. Almost there. Two more floors. He forced himself to turn around and smile uncomfortably at Karkat. "I... I'll be finishing up that proposal today. I hope you like it. Were you stuck here very late last night? I saw your car still there when I left," he babbled breathlessly. 

One more floor. Hopefully. He couldn't see the numbers now.

Karkat scowled at him, then his face relaxed into that weird almost-smile he sometimes had when looking at him these days.

Then he reached out and touched John's cheek, sliding his fingers into his hair.

John squeaked and jerked backwards like he'd been burned. "Stop it! The doors are about to--"

The doors opened. 

Karkat was growling at him, a low rumble of sound in his throat. The troll turned his hand over and opened it to display a small beetle. "This was in your fucking hair. You need to lay off the fucking caffeine, Egbert!"

And he stomped past him down the hall, still holding the bug.

Blushing and irritated, John followed him. He couldn't stand how everything Karkat did got to him so badly. He didn't know if Karkat was hitting on him or not anymore, and he couldn't take all this damn tension, anymore!

He had to talk to Sollux.

======>

> **Current John: Descend**

Shortly after lunch, John set his newly-printed proposal on Karkat's desk and then sidled towards the doorway. "Uh, go ahead and read that, and when I get back you can tell me if you want me to make any more changes to it, okay? I'll be right back."

Karkat picked up the folder, then looked up and frowned. "Where the fuck are you going? I won't take long to read this."

"Uh..." Frozen like a deer in headlights, John hesitated, too long. Then a flashbulb went off in his brain. "Bathroom!"

He absconded before Karkat could say anything else, though his boss' surprised and slightly aggravated call chased him down the hall. "You just had your lunch break!"

The elevator opened after a short wait, and John stepped inside, punching the 'close door' button out of habit and then the button for the Marketing floor. His stomach made flipflops as the elevator dropped, and he doubted it was just because of the speed of the elevator.

He was nervous. He just really hoped that Sollux listened this time.

The doors opened on hallways that branched off in three directions. He had no idea which one was Sollux' office, so he picked a direction and began to wander. Thankfully, within a minute or two a familiar-sounding murmur led him to a slightly open door. He peeked through the crack and spotted Sollux sitting at his desk, a telephone held up to his ear.

John ducked back before Sollux could see him, then loitered outside for a few moments until he heard the troll hang up, then he knocked and poked his head in the door.

Sollux looked up, then scowled. "Yeth?"

Damn. John's heart sank, but he pushed the door open and stepped inside, pasting a bright smile on his face. "Uh, hi Sollux. Nice office."

"Thankth," Sollux said warily. "Ith thith about your pilot?"

"Huh?" John blinked. He hadn't expected that Sollux would even know he was working on a marketing proposal, but apparently he did. "Oh, no. Will you be getting that, when it's done?"

Sollux shrugged. "Maybe. Tho if it'th not about that, what do you want?" 

Despite his seemingly forbidding attitude, the troll gestured to the chairs opposite him on the other side of his desk, so John stepped closer and sat down. 

Then he instantly sprang up again, too nervous to stay still. He began to pace. "Okay, look, I'm here to really clear the air, because I really hate that you're mad at me, and I don't _want_ you to be mad at me, and I'm really trying to do everything I can to avoid that, so will you please hear me out, Sollux?" He looked up at Sollux beseechingly.

With a roll of plastic eyes, Sollux settled back in his chair. "I'm lithtening."

One hurdle, cleared. Level up!

John stopped and turned to face Sollux, spreading his hands wide. "Okay, here's the thing. I don't know how I feel about Karkat - okay, no, I think I really like Karkat a lot. I did when we were kids, and I still do."

"Egbert..." Sollux said warningly, but John waved his hands frantically in his face.

"Please _listen_! The thing is, I know you like him, too. I don't know what exactly is between you and Karkat other than friendship, but either way, please believe me that I don't want to get in between you. I don't know, maybe Karkat doesn't know how you feel about him, but if you want my help getting to be his boyfriend, I'll help!"

"For fuck'th thake, Egbert," Sollux growled. "We're already together."

"You are?" John stopped, paling. That was the worst case scenario - he had really never thought that Karkat would _do_ something like cheat on Sollux, no matter how much he might like John. "Then...then Karkat is really trying to cheat on you with me?"

" _No!_ What the fuck ith wrong--"

"Did you suffer your brain damage as a child, Egbert? Or is that a recent development?"

John stiffened and whirled around at the unexpected snarling voice, to see Karkat standing framed in the doorway, his hands clenched into fists and his crimson eyes flashing with rage. 

"Karkat!" John gasped in horror. How much had he heard? Based on the look on his face, he'd definitely heard the last part. "Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Wondering what _you_ were doing here," Karkat said, stalking into the room. Despite the fact that he was shorter than John, John took a step back and bumped into Sollux' desk. He had never seen Karkat look so angry. He had gone right through his usual incoherent verbosity and come right back around to cold fury.

"I was just--"

"And it turns out," Karkat snapped, poking a sharp claw into the middle of John's chest. "That after knowing us trolls for most of your pathetic, worm-like life, you never succeeded in absorbing one single basic, fundamental fact about trolls."

"What fact?" John whimpered.

" _Quadrants_ ," Karkat hissed the word like an angry tea kettle.

Sollux came around the desk into John's field of view. "We're moirailth, you fucking dumbathh," he said. "I don't want KK flushed for mythelf, I want him to not purthue a _lother_ who already hurt him onthe becauthe he'th tho fucking inthenthitive, he can't even bother to remember that trollth aren't the thame ath humanth."

"Moirails?" John echoed, his heart sinking as his eyes widened with horror. _Oh my god, I'm so stupid!_

"You thought I was the kind of bulge-chomping shit nozzle who would cheat on my matesprit?" Karkat asked, his voice lowered dangerously. "Is that really something you thought?"

John swallowed. "No, I never really--"

"I'm such a fucking idiot," Karkat snarled, taking a step back and looking at Sollux. "You were right, this whole fucking time."

"Of courthe I wath," Sollux said. His tone was smug, but there was real pain in his face as he looked at Karkat.

"No wait!" John exclaimed. "I'm the one who's been an idiot!"

Karkat gave him a fierce look and pointed at the door, his hand trembling with the force of his anger. "Get out. I don't want to see your fucking face for the rest of the day!"

John swallowed hard, unable to truly encompass the myriad of ways in which he'd monumentally fucked things up. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," he stammered, and fled towards the door. 

It slammed behind him, and he immediately heard the yelling start, Karkat shouting in Alternian, while Sollux made soothing sounds. John couldn't understand it, but every syllable was like a blow, a nail in the coffin that was his friendship with Karkat, and he continued down the hall, just barely holding himself back from breaking into a run.

He didn't stop walking until he had left the building, plunging through the doors into an afternoon so chill it seemed to freeze the air in his lungs and turn the tears on his cheeks into ice. 

He wasn't sure if he'd be allowed back in tomorrow, and he wasn't sure if he even _deserved_ to come back.


	10. Chapter 10

> **Current John: Answer that douchebag**

EB: dave?  
EB: wow the last couple of days have really sucked, and i guess i need to talk to someone about what happened, and you're idle, but i hoped maybe you were just invisible  
EB: oh  
EB: you're at that work party, i forgot  
EB: i really really screwed up, dave  
EB: i'm scared, and i really do love him  
EB: maybe rose is around  
EB: or jade  
EB: what am i going to do?  
EB: wait, someone's pestering me

\-- twinArmageddons [TA] started pestering ectoBiologist [EB] \--

TA: hey.   
EB: ...   
TA: ii notiice you diidn't come two work twoday.   
EB: ...   
TA: or yesterday.   
EB: ...   
TA: okay, what?   
EB: uh  
EB: i'm just waiting for you to start yelling at me, actually  
TA: ii'm not trolliing you two yell at you.  
TA: iif ii wanted two yell at you, ii'd be doiing iit in per2on, liike ii've been doiing for the la2t three month2.   
EB: okay, fair point  
EB: then do you want me to apologize?   
TA: do you want two apologiize?   
EB: yeah!   
TA: then don't fuckiing bother.   
EB: then i hope i'm not being a complete idiot again, but why are you pestering me?  
EB: i mean using pesterchum to talk to me, haha........   
TA: iit'2 okay, ii got what you meant.  
TA: ii need your help.  
TA: ii haven't 2een kk 2iince that day. 

======>

>   
**Current John: Engage Hero Mode**  


John stepped out onto his balcony and, in defiance of everything he'd ever been told to do when about to try something incredibly risky involving heights, he looked down. 

He didn't live on the top floor of their building. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, he wasn't even really that high up. There were a lot of buildings around that were taller. But it still looked bone-crushingly high to him right now, considering what he was about to do.

The wind ruffled his hair and knifed through his t-shirt. Maybe he should have worn a coat, but he thought it would probably cause more trouble than it was worth. For a moment, he closed his eyes and remembered soaring above Skaia. Back then, he hadn't been worried about heights. He had flown far higher than this, and hadn't had a care in the world.

Back then, he'd been a god.

Right now he was just a desperate man in his late twenties, shivering in a t-shirt and jeans with snow falling gently down onto his black hair.

But he could do this. He could make this happen.

The balcony was a long rectangle shape that ran nearly the entire width of his apartment, encircled by a simple iron railing with vertical slats. It looked very narrow and precarious, but he was sure it was secure enough to hold a man's weight.

Pretty sure. He was skinny.

He climbed up onto the railing, hooking one leg over and inching along past some plant pots Jade had given him, until he reached the very end where his balcony ended and a sheer drop to the concrete below began. He swallowed hard, blinking snow from his eyes - it was beginning to snow very heavily now, and the iron rail was burningly cold and slick under his hands.

Two feet in front of him, maybe three, was Karkat's balcony. 

He swung his other leg over, clinging to the balcony railing. It was securely fastened to the building, and he didn't even feel a wobble as he very cautiously turned around so that his back was pressed against the railing and his heels were hooked on the bottom rail, wedged between the slats of the railing. Now there was nothing in front of him but empty air.

Cautiously, he reached out for Karkat's balcony railing, but his fingers stopped far too soon and he recoiled, securing his grip again.

 _God fucking damnit, John Egbert!_ he scolded himself. _How much of a coward are you, now? Have you completely forgotten who you are? This whole thing could have been prevented from the beginning if you had just done what you always did in the first place! Be true to yourself, be brave, and be the best damn friendleader you can be no matter what!_

He jumped. He reached.

He caught the balcony railing and clung, his sock-clad feet banging into the concrete and then scrabbling up until his toes were secure. Then he breathed, and climbed over. Safe.

Ish. There was still the troll ahead.

Karkat's balcony was bare except for a single chair and a little table, both of which were dusted with snow. There was no light coming through the vertical blinds at the door, and John glanced back at his own balcony now with a sinking heart. Sollux had told him he'd spent half an hour knocking on Karkat's door with no answer, so John had decided not to bother with the conventional route.

But what if he just wasn't _home_? Images of himself freezing to death in his t-shirt and socked feet outside Karkat's door flitted through his head.

Duh. He'd just jump back before that happened. 

Besides, Karkat _was_ probably home and being a  2ulky fucka22 according to Sollux. Where else would he be?

He banged on the door, and when he didn't immediately get an answer, he kept on banging.

Suddenly the blinds were whipped aside and the door pulled open. Karkat stood in the doorway, wearing a bright red set of flannel pyjamas with a hood on it, shaped like a dragon. It was obviously a gift from Terezi, and quite old and well-loved by the worn state of it.

He stared at John, mouth open and working, and his face slowly turning the same colour as his pyjamas.

John figured he had better head things off at the pass.

"Hi Karkat!" he said brightly. "Can I come in? It's really cold out here."

Karkat looked up at the snowy sky, then back at John. "Did that lisping asshole with a bifurcated brain made of grubloaf put you up to this?"

"Sort of," John said, a little more gently. Since it seemed Karkat wasn't going to invite him in, he made an attempt to slip past him into the dark room beyond, but Karkat's hand shot out and grabbed him by the arm.

John winced as the claws dug into his bare skin. Karkat leaned in close. "I'm letting you in, but you're just going straight back out the front door, understand me? There isn't anyone in any universe I want to talk to less than I want to talk to you."

"I'm not leaving," John said. "Not until you listen to what I have to say!"

Karkat scoffed and let him go, stomping deeper into the apartment. "Shove it up your seedflap!" he snapped. "You never listen to what _I_ say, obviously. So why should I listen to you?"

John shut the door and followed, navigating through the pitch-black bedroom by the lights coming from the main room. But once he was able to see where it was, he reached out and caught Karkat's hand.

"Well, I stand by saying that I'm not the only one with a listening problem," he said. "But really, mine is the worst. I was so scared, Karkat, and I'm even more scared, right now than I've ever been in my life! I don't know when I stopped knowing how to be brave and became a coward, but I've decided that I'm going to stop, now. Because you're way too important for me to run away again."

Karkat stopped walking, his arm stretched back at an awkward angle and his hand loose in John's grasp. But John saw a pointed ear twitch slightly, and he knew he was listening.

"Ten years ago, I panicked," John said softly. "I wanted to be with you more than anything, and it changed everything about how I saw myself, and that terrified me. So I ran away. And when you came back into my life, it just brought back all of those scared feelings again, so I made up every excuse I could think of for why it couldn't be real." He laughed helplessly, a quiet, lame, huff of a sound that barely qualified. "I guess I really wasn't that brave or heroic, after all."

The hand curled around his own, just a little. Encouraged, John plunged forward.

"I know that I've hurt you so badly," he said. "And if you've decided that you don't love me after all, then I'll understand. But the truth is, Karkat, I _do_ love you. And all I want is to be with you for the rest of my life, or at least as long as I can manage it before you realize I'm dumb and get bored of me. I think you're brilliant, and wonderful, and I want to learn everything I can from you. And I do remember about moirails. Sollux is really worried about you."

He closed his mouth and swallowed hard. Karkat hadn't turned around, but he could see the gleam of an eye as the troll glanced back, just slightly.

"Are you done?" the troll huffed. "Is that the extent of your grubfisted excuse for a confession?"

John sagged. "Well. Yeah."

Karkat turned around fully and glared at John, his crimson eyes afire with irritation and sharp teeth bared. "You really hurt me, Egbert. I mean, really hurt me. There were times I wished I _could_ hate you, the way I used to, but I can't."

John's heart clenched, and he stared at the floor. "I know, Karkat. I wish I could do it all over again. Just scratch and never screw it up like this again."

"Don't _say_ that," Karkat hissed, and John's head jerked up in startlement. He saw Karkat _smiling_ , and it shocked him all over again. Karkat was smiling? Now? "Not even as a joke," the troll said, shaking his head. "Scratching wasn't a good idea in the game, and it'll never be a good idea. It's the idea of grubfisted idiots, with no more than a cell or two in their think pan, huddling together for warmth."

"Karkat," John pointed out. "Scratching our session was your idea."

"You see?" Karkat exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "A complete fucking idiot! Like the kind of idiot that can't get the fuck over you when you're apologizing and looking at me with those pathetic barkbeast eyes! Do you know what a living hell the last two days have been? Look at me! I'm wearing this stupid nostalgic piece of shit outfit and you're looking completely adorable!"

John laughed, then looked horrified, wondering if he was supposed to do that. But Karkat reached for him and wrapped his arms around him tight, and the next thing he knew their forehead were pressed together and John was looking straight into Karkat's eyes.

"Does this mean you forgive me?" John asked softly, reaching up to wrap his arms shyly around Karkat's waist.

"Hell no," Karkat growled.

"Oh."

Karkat breathed in deeply, then let his air out in a rush. Claws scraped down the back of John's neck, light as a feather. "But I'd consider it if you'll finally be my fucking boyfriend."

John felt a smile, a real, soft, gooey smile, stretch his lips. "Okay." He drew a breath. "But... there's one more thing."

He felt Karkat stiffen up in his arms. "What?"

John drew back so he could see Karkat's face. The troll was looking wary and nervous, his eyes flicking from his smiling lips to his eyes and back down again. "Can we go on a date?"

It took a second for the words to penetrate. The dawning of understanding on Karkat's face was like a sunrise, and it warmed John's heart to see it, as if the sun really were shining. "Hell, yeah. Yeah, we can go on a date. Dinner and a movie?"

"Sounds great," John said, beaming.

Karkat broke away from him. "Just let me get my coat--no wait, fuck. I need _clothes_." He about-faced abruptly and bolted past John towards his bedroom, dragon-head hood bobbing.

"Calm down!" John exclaimed, laughing, and trotted towards the door. "I need shoes, and a coat, too!"

He got as far as the door before he remembered something, too, and then hurried back towards Karkat's bedroom. He burst through the door to find Karkat half into a pair of pants. 

The troll yelped and whirled around to look at John, his face turning red as a beet. "What are you doing?"

"I remembered my front door is locked!" John said, breathless with laughter as he headed for the door to the balcony. He was going to have to jump back across.

This time, he flew.

======>

>   
**Current John: Rise up**   


They had dinner and talked about work and movies, and old times, and John told a funny story that Dave had told him about his new editor, and Karkat laughed until he nearly sprayed beef out of his nose. 

Then they went to a movie that Karkat hadn't worked on, made by a completely different studio. It was a romcom. John didn't mind.

It was the best date John had ever been on, hands down. Now that the air had been cleared between them, it was like the years had disappeared, only better. The only tension between them was anticipation.

And that anticipation broke the instant they reached John's door. Karkat caught his hand. "You're not...done, are you?"

John glanced down at the troll, his date, and tugged him closer. He bent his head and laid a kiss on Karkat's mouth, unlocking and opening his door with his free hand.

"Definitely not done," he assured him as he pulled the door open. "But you don't have a bed."

Karkat's eyes widened and he let John pull him into the apartment, unresisting.

The instant the door closed, Karkat attacked. 

John was out of his shoes and halfway out of his coat when the compact figure hit him like a bullet train. He laughed and stumbled backwards, dropped his coat on the floor and nearly tripped over it. "Hang on! Jeez, hang on!"

Though Karkat was tearing at his clothes, there was a suspicious wetness soaking into John's shirt that he decided not to comment on. Instead he dragged Karkat into his bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light, and fell backwards onto the bed, tugging Karkat's shirt up and running his fingers up the troll's knobbly spine.

His skin was tougher than John was used to, harder under his fingers, though it still had give to it. Everything about Karkat was fascinating to him, from the prick of his claws to the wiry texture of his curly hair. He touched Karkat's right horn and the troll chirped and groaned, rubbing up against his hand like a cat.

"You like that?" John whispered, rubbing the horn a little harder with the palm of his hand. Karkat just warbled in a rather incoherent way.

When he'd judged that he'd reduced Karkat to a gibbering mess, he let his hand comb through Karkat's hair and then down to the collar of his shirt. Karkat gave a growl and tugged at John's shirt, apparently still non-verbal, but his meaning was clear - get these damn clothes off.

John pushed up and stripped out of his shirt, then pulled Karkat's off. The troll kissed down his collar bone, down his chest and stomach, squirming back until he was kneeling on the floor. 

"Oh god," John groaned, his jeans tightening even further as Karkat's fingers worked over his groin.

"You called?" Karkat murmured, an old joke between them, then opened John's fly and grabbed the waistband of his pants, tugging down. "I'm so done with clothes, you don't even know how finished I am."

John grinned and lifted his hips, helping Karkat to pull off his pants. "I feel the same way." He scooted forward and thumped to the floor beside his bed, all but wedged between the bed and Karkat. He slipped his arms around Karkat's neck and kissed him. 

Karkat chirped in surprise, but kissed him eagerly. "I thought you wanted to do this on the bed," he murmured between soft, passionate kisses. 

"I do!" John said, giggling a little and reaching for Karkat's pants. "But if I have to be naked in front of you, I want to know what you look like when you're naked, too!"

Karkat snorted softly and wriggled out of his jeans. "You haven't seen any troll porn, yet? I know it's a niche market, but I bet it's right up your alley."

John blushed to the roots of his hair. "That's different. It's not _you_."

Snorting, Karkat yanked him up and they crawled onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and kisses and laughter. John found himself on his back, Karkat's arm and leg thrown over him and the troll's lips buried against his neck. 

The troll's bulge was out and it coiled against his thigh, tickling a little, and John blushed. His own cock was heavy and flushed, lying against his stomach. Though they'd only been making out for a few minutes, he had been thinking about this all night, thinking about the night Karkat had jerked him off in his front hall. Thinking about all the nights he'd spent _thinking_ about this.

God, he wanted this so bad. He'd been waiting for ten years for this.

He turned and pressed against Karkat, their hips together and grinding. Karkat chirped and crooned, making the most incredible noises. Karkat's bulge coiled around his cock, squeezing, and John groaned as a wave of pleasure went through him.

"I love you, Karkat," John whispered, pressing his forehead to Karkat's. 

Karkat's breath hitched and kissed him again. "You're the most--"

"Pitiful, I know," John said, smiling sheepishly.

"Stupid." Karkat retorted, and tugged John closer, rocking against him. "And amazing, human being I have ever met."

His heart swelling, John rocked back and against Karkat, losing himself in the feelings. Though the anatomy was alien, it was as though they fit together perfectly. Karkat began making those soft, throaty noises again, mingling with John's own cries. 

They rolled over until Karkat draped over John, his legs spreading wide. He worked his body down over John's cock, squeezing every inch with his hot, moist sheath. John cried out as waves of pleasure washed through his body with every move Karkat made. He arched his back and pushed upwards, and Karkat echoed his cry.

He dropped a hand down and curled his fingers around Karkat's bulge, gently drawing the tentacle through his fingers. It was moist and slippery, and curled around his wrist like it was giving a hug. Karkat cried out again, jerking, his body convulsing and squeezing around John's cock.

They rocked together, their movements growing faster and more frenzied. John's pleasure spiralled through him, higher and sharper, and finally the spring snapped. He yelled, emptying himself into Karkat's body. Karkat keened and John felt a splash of hot fluid hit his chest and stomach as the bulge twisted and writhed between his fingers.

Karkat sprawled over him, panting for breath. John groaned and hugged him, burying his face in Karkat's hair. He rubbed a horn, making Karkat croon shakily.

John lay there, utterly content and happy for the first time in - well, ever. 

Their breathing slowly calmed, and finally Karkat nuzzled him with a soft, content huff.

"No freak-outs yet?" the troll murmured into his ear, a warble in his words that made them rumble like a purr.

"No," John whispered, smiling. "No freak-outs. Are you happy?"

Karkat snorted. "I have no complaints. You?"

John thought for a long moment, basking in the warm glow, but really wanting to explore his feelings, just in case. There was only one thing that nagged at him.

"I'm just worried about one thing," he whispered finally.

He felt Karkat stiffen and lift his head. He opened his eyes and saw a crimson glare looking down at him, worry flickering deep in his eyes. "What?"

John licked his lips. "Do I still have my job?"

Karkat blinked at him, then snorted with soft laughter and relaxed against him. "I suppose I can avoid firing you for one more day, yeah."

John smiled and hugged him tight. "Thanks, boss."

Karkat chuckled and pushed himself up, grabbing John's hand. "This date is far from over."

"Huh?" John got up and let Karkat pull him off the bed. "What are we doing now?"

"First?" Karkat smirked at him, eyes lighting up. "First we shower. You're dripping. And then we sleep."

John chuckled and eagerly followed. "Sounds like the best possible way to end the night."

And it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all the comments and love and feedback. I've had such a great time writing this fic, it probably should be illegal, and I thank you for your patience in the slow spots.
> 
> And if you've gotten this far and are still wondering - yes, the plotline of this fic was based on the manga Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, by Nakamura Shungiku. I would read a chapter and then plot out the next few chapters of this fic, so the general story is much the same, though every word is original. If you want to read a scanlation, you can read it here. If you like adorable boys love manga, you should. There's also an anime. It's cute.


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